Category Archives: National News

by | February 27, 2010 · 12:56 pm

All the News from WAES

Click on image for video of Tom Beebe of WAES discussing Penny for Kids on WisconsinEye's Newsmakers

Things have been busy with the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools (WAES) and the Penny for Kids campaign.  Time to catch up a little.

Click on the image at the top for a fine interview with WAES Executive Director (and lone employee) Tom Beebe.  It really explains what Penny for Kids is all about.

The Rural Caucus presented some proposals on school-funding this week.  They aren’t bad, but they aren’t anywhere near enough.  WAES issued a press release, mostly saying that.  Here is an excerpt.

Their package of ideas addresses very real problems. For 15 years, schools and children have been subjected to an unsustainable school funding formula and now they are actually facing drastic cuts in state funding. As a result of this crisis, many schools are cutting personnel, services, and programs, others are fighting just to keep their doors open, and property taxpayers are being overburdened.

So while I applaud the Rural Caucus for their efforts, their proposal falls far short of what our children, schools, and communities need.The ideas forwarded by the Rural Caucus are Band-Aids and Band-Aids won’t stop this kind of bleeding.

What we urgently need is bold thinking and immediate, significant financial help – – a transfusion, not Band-Aids — as well as a long-term solution to the school funding crisis.

It is for this reason that the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools has launched “A Penny for Kids,” a program that has the support of thousands of voters. It proposes a one-penny increase in the sales tax in order to meet, head on, the revenue shortfall. This transfusion of revenue will buy us the time we need to address the structural failures of our current funding formula.

I appreciate the Rural Caucus’s willingness to take on this issue, but their solution falls far short of the urgent and significant reform that must begin now.

Last, but not least, the latest School-Funding reform Update from WAES (full update linked here, table of contents below with selected items linked to related posts on AMPS:

It is both good and bad that WAES is so busy.  It has become clear that WAES with Penny for Kids is the only group who have recognized the crisis that is happening and are trying to do something about it, in both the long and short term.   WAES can do this because we (I’m on the Board) are truly a grassroots organization, not beholden to the status quo or “the powers that be.”  As people realize this, WAES is attraxting more attention and interest.  That’s good.  The downside is that WAES is resource poor and over-extended.  We need more help from individuals and organizations.  Get in touch with WAES and find out how you can help.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under "education finance", Budget, education, finance, Local News, National News, School Finance, Take Action, Uncategorized

by | February 23, 2010 · 3:02 pm

Action to the South

At Fred Klonsky’s Blog there was recently a mini version of an AMPS type “Buzzsaw/Cuts” post on school budget issues in Illinois:

On this Saturday morning, this is how the state of Illinois is dealing with its school funding crisis: In Lemont, in Galesburg, in East Richland, in Hoopston, in Kaneland, in Waukegan, in Eldorado, in Jasper, in Elgin, in Knoxville, in Indian Prairie District 204, in Plainfield, in Ottawa, in Orion near the Quad Cities, and in Quincy.

I can’t say if the state and school budgets are worse in Illinois or Wisconsin and it doesn’t really matter which has gone further or faster in the wrong direction.  Both are in bad shape and both states are dominated by politicians who believe their re-elections are more important than addressing this reality and the lobbyists and donors who reinforce this message.

At least in Illinois, people are fed up enough to try to make their voices heard.  They have formed the Responsible Budget Coalition.  The video above is from their February 17 rally.  Below is their “We Can’t Wait” video.

We may not have thousands at the Capitol yet, but interest in tax and budget reform is growing and thousands in Wisconsin have signed the Penny For Kids petition.  Click the link to join them.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under "education finance", Budget, education, finance, Local News, National News, Pennies for Kids, School Finance, Take Action, Uncategorized, We Are Not Alone

by | February 21, 2010 · 1:52 pm

The Fix Is In

Bob Herbert of the New York Times has been doing an admirable job of outlining the human costs of our neglected infrastructure in his weekly columns. On Saturday he highlighted the conditions in schools throughout the country. And while he noted that getting the nation’s schools up to date is a huge undertaking, it represents only a small part of the overall infrastructure challenge we face as a nation. While highlighting a school in Pennsylvania built in 1861, with asbestos encrusted walls and dodgy electrical wiring, he noted the difficulty in getting good data on the physical condition of the country’s schools.

Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s chief economic adviser, has said that 75 percent of the public schools have structural deficiencies and 25 percent have problems with their ventilation systems.

But how to pay for this? Herbert made the point that:

right now there are not enough people at the higher echelons of government trying to figure out the best ways to raise the enormous amounts of money that will be required, and the most responsible ways of spending that money. And there are not enough leaders explaining to the public how heavy this lift will be, and why it is so necessary, and what sacrifices will be required to get the job properly done.

Suggestions have included such institutions as a national infrastructure or regional infrastructure banks that “would allocate public funds and also leverage private capital for the most important projects.” His larger point was that top governmental leaders should be seeking all kinds of solutions that are both solid and creative, while quickly implementing the best of them.

Which brings us to this next item, one with twist and turns not completely understandable at this point, but certainly not held up by people like myself as a model of how to “get the job properly done” — to use Herbert’s words.

Diane Ravitch, an intellectual on education policy, difficult to pigeonhole politically (appointed to public office by both G.H.W. Bush and Clinton), but best described as an independent, co-writes a blog with Deborah Meier that some of our readers may be familiar with called “Bridging Differences.” This past week she highlighted a possibly disturbing development in the Race to the Top  competition program of the Department of Education, that dangles $4.3 billion to the states with a possible $1.3 billion to follow. Ravitch’s critique suggests that this competition is not run by pragmatists, but rather by ideologues who are led by the Bill Gates Foundation.

If this election had been held five years ago, the department would be insisting on small schools, but because Gates has already tried and discarded that approach, the department is promoting the new Gates remedies: charter schools, privatization, and evaluating teachers by student test scores.

Two of the top lieutenants of the Gates Foundation were placed in charge of the competition by Secretary Arne Duncan. Both have backgrounds as leaders in organisations dedicated to creating privately managed schools that operate with public money.

So, why should it be surprising that the Race to the Top reflects the priorities of the NewSchools Venture Fund (charter schools) and of the Gates Foundation (teacher evaluations by test scores)?

But here’s where the weirdness of this story enters.

Marc Dean Millot, a writer on education policy and someone who has not been overly critical of charter schools and their “education entrepreneurs” in the past, was contracted for 6 months to write on the Scholastic blog, “This Week in Education.” Millot had the temerity to pose some questions about those conflicts of interest at the Department of Education and had asked Sec. Duncan to nick this issue in the bud quickly.

I have now heard the same thing from three independent credible sources — the fix is in on the U.S. Department of Education’s competitive grants, in particular Race to the Top (RTTT) and Investing in Innovation (I3). Secretary Duncan needs to head this off now, by admitting that he and his team have potential conflicts of interests with regard to their roles in grant making, recognizing that those conflicts are widely perceived by potential grantees, and explaining how grant decisions will be insulated from interference by the department’s political appointees.

For his troubles, he was immediately sacked and the offending post removed. Fortunately, nothing is completely lost on the internet and you can read a cached version of his “Connect the Dots” piece here.

Even more chilling is Diane Ravitch’s predictions for the future, regardless of whether Secretary Duncan cleans up this apparent conflict of interest.

As hundreds and possibly thousands more charter schools open, we will see many financial and political scandals. We will see corrupt politicians and investors putting their hands into the cashbox. We will see corrupt deals where public school space is handed over to entrepreneurs who have made contributions to the politicians making the decisions. We will see many more charter operators pulling in $400,000-500,000 a year for their role, not as principals, but as “rainmakers” who build warm relationships with politicians and investors.

When someday we trace back how large segments of our public school system were privatized and how so many millions of public dollars ended up in the pockets of high-flying speculators instead of being used to reduce class size, repair buildings, and improve teacher quality, we will look to the origins of the Race to the Top and to the interlocking group of foundations, politicians, and entrepreneurs who created it.

We indeed are entering another chapter in the deepening decline in support for public education. Our looming deficit in Madison is just one example of many across the country. What we shouldn’t have to battle so vigourously is our elected and unelected “advocates.” Sadly, this also includes some of our own friends in the state capital.

Robert Godfrey

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by | February 4, 2010 · 4:52 pm

Starve them into submission (with some corrections and an update)

[corrected material crossed out; new material in italics, update at bottom]

Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction has officially embraced a policy of starving Milwaukee Public Schools into submission by exercising his power to withhold Federal funds from the district.

Here is the Press Release in it’s entirety (official notice here).

Evers issues notice to Milwaukee Public Schools

MADISON — State Superintendent Tony Evers issued a statement regarding the notice he signed today that will allow him to use his authority to withhold or direct federal funds allocated to Milwaukee Public Schools.

“As the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, I have a legal responsibility to the children of Milwaukee. Today, I issued a notice that will allow me to speed up change in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) through the use of my authority regarding federal funds. Using the only tool allowed under state law, I am acting to ensure federal funds are used effectively to improve MPS.

“No one can or should be satisfied with the current progress in MPS to improve. I look forward to full cooperation to implement all required changes, with an increased sense of urgency, as I continue to work with MPS leaders.”

Evers had previously sought the power to  — unilaterally and  with no defined criteria —  declare any district “in need of improvement,” issue directives on almost all aspects governance and education and “withhold state aid from any school district that fails to comply to the state superintendent’s satisfaction with any of the above directives.”  That effort, Assembly Bill 534, failed.

Bribing Milwaukee into submission with uncertain Race to the Top funding also failed.  The carrot is gone now, what is left is starvation and the stick.

The last thing Milwaukee needs is more program cuts.  Just this week, the lack of resources led the distinct to discontinue SAGE class size reduction in 11 schools.  Federal dollars total about 18% of the MPS budget, Title I  — the funds targeted for poor children in play here — probably about 2/3 or more of that, call it over 12% (I’m not sure if Evers can also withhold the ARRA flow-through “state stabilization funds that his buddy Jim Doyle and others dishonestly tried to spin as “state aid”).  It isn’t clear what Evers is going to do and how he is going to do that with by cutting 18% a significant portion of the budget.

At this time there are no details, no plan, just the starvation.

Although not referenced in either the notice or the Press Release, there is a “Corrective Action Plan” that was issued in 2008 and a draft and  update from 2009.  Here is the report on the response by the Milwaukee Public Schools (I will post more relevant documents as I find them).

The lack of plan is foolish anyway you look at it.  From a policy point of view, there is no policy to look at.  From a political point of view, no positive case for the action is being made, no “this has to happen,” only “this can”t go on.”  That’s not the way to win over the undecided or convince anyone that this isn’t a political stunt.

There may be a good case to make that this is a reasonable and justified action, but the case has not been made.  That case would require more than the “No one can or should be satisfied with the current progress in MPS” in the Press Release, it would entail a detailed documentation of how MPS has failed in the Corrective Actions and why Evers thinks that withholding this money will produce better results.  My guess is that we will see some of this in the coming weeks.

Without a governance or educational case being made, this looks like a political stunt.

Since Evers has been linked at the hip to Doyle and Mayor/Gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett on MPS issues, one calculation may be that Barrett will win votes outside of Milwaukee based on this.  I wouldn’t count on that off-setting the votes lost in Milwaukee or those lost around the state from people who actually know a thing or two about education.  My first reaction is that Barrett just lost the election.  Probably an over-reaction (really too early to tell), but not an outrageous conclusion.

The timing is bad too.  Unless this is direct reaction to the Superintendent hire, it makes no sense to not give Gregory Thornton a chance to at least get settled.  It certainly makes his job more difficult, if not impossible

It is ironic that the standards invoked (and required by statute ) are the NCLB Adequate Yearly Progress standards that Superintendent Evers has never been a fan of.   When power overcomes sense, any tool at hand looks good.

This kind of  bullying  was (mostly)  not part of what candidate Tony Evers promised.  Many of us thought better of him, or at very least that he understood that a lack of adequate resources was part of the problem, not the way to a solution.  Time for second thoughts.

Update:

Wisconsin Radio Network had a story linking this to the Mayoral Control fight that brought a reaction from Tony Evers:

Update: Evers says the statement to MPS is about the district’s failure to improve in specific areas which are spelled out in the notice, and NOT about mayoral control, and that my attempt to connect the two in this post was “reprehensible.”

Good to have that information, but if you haven’t made the case on education and governance — and they haven’t —  then it seems reasonable for people to speculate about political reasons (I did, not Mayoral Control directly, but politics).

Under the circumstances “reprehensible” seems much too strong.

Whatever the combination of motives, for good and ill, politics will be part of this.

Responses from the MPS Board and Supt. William Andrekopoulos are linked here.

Update #2

Just some links.

Bob Hague at Wisconsin Radio Network has his full interviews with Evers and Andrekopoulos up here.  Worth a listen.

The main Journal Sentinel story is here.

Michael Mathias at Pundit Nation has a long and interesting post.

Gretchen Schuldt at Blogging MPS has a nice roundup (better than this one and she will no doubt be following developments more closely then AMPS, put her on the must-read list).

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | January 24, 2010 · 11:15 pm

Honesty from a Department of Education Official — Policies Are “Harming the Education of Students”

Diogenes searching with his lamp.

From Caroline Grannan, Examiner.com a report on a radio appearance by Peter Cunningham, (assistant secretary of communications for the U.S. Department of Education), where he “readily agreed with the views of another program guest that overreliance on standardized testing is detrimental to students, and that “many” charter schools, a model being promoted as a solution for troubled schools, are not successful” (listen here).

Also on the program was Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute.  As Grannan reports:

Race to the Top, Rothstein charged, is “accentuating the harm that NCLB did.” NCLB’s emphasis on testing only for math and reading is unchanged in RTTT.

“A major consequence of No Child Left Behind that’s done major harm to American education is the narrowing of the curriculum,” Rothstein said. Sciences, history, social studies, music, the arts and physical education are neglected or abandoned as educators struggle to adhere to NCLB’s emphasis on math and reading, Rothstein explained, and “Race to the Top doesn’t change that.” Abandoning other subjects “does the most harm to disadvantaged students,” Rothstein added.

Moderator Warren Olney followed up Rothstein’s comments with the question to Cunningham: “Are standardized tests a good measure of teacher performance and ultimately of school performance?”

“No, they’re not,” Cunningham admitted bluntly. “Education has been corrupted. In addition to narrowing the curriculum by abandoning other topics, what this kind of system does is create incentives to game the system. We’re actually harming the education of students in this country.” He mentioned, without more specifics, the “hope” of reauthorizing NCLB to include testing in more subjects. The prospect of increasing testing is likely to raise more concerns, but the discussion didn’t pursue that issue.

On the subject of charter schools, Rothstein disputed the view promoted by both the Bush and Obama administrations that charters are a solution for troubled schools. “The research is pretty consistent,” he said. “Charter schools on average don’t have better student performance than regular schools.”

Rothstein got no argument from Cunningham, who responded, “We 100 percent agree with Mr. Rothstein that many of them are not good” and called for more accountability for charter schools. [emphases added].

These flashes of honesty are nice, but it is sad that administration official simply acknowledging what both informed  common sense and the weight of research say is cause for hope or cheer.

There really is no excuse for the misrepresentations we have come to see as the norm and the knowing pursuit of harmful policies should be criminal.

Wisconsin, like 40 other states is so desperate for money that it has thrown away common sense and hard won research-based knowledge to twist our laws in a manner that buys us a ticket to a lottery where the prize is money that must  be spent to a great degree on testing policies that do more harm than good.  What is wrong with these people?  What is wrong with us?

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | December 5, 2009 · 2:10 pm

Mayoral Control Links and Thoughts

I haven’t had much time to blog lately and the items are piling up, so it is time to catch up a little.  Here are some links to and comments on some relatively recent items on Mayoral control.

From the Chicago Tribune, “Chicago school board begins 2nd internal investigation.”

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s handpicked Board President has committed suicide, his handpicked Board is under investigation for misuse of funds for the second time and has refused to release documents requested by the media.  That’s good management and open governance Chicago style.  That’s the model that Arne Duncan and Jim Doyle want to bring to Wisconsin.

Advocates for Mayoral control keep telling us that the change increases accountability by giving ultimate responsibility to a single elected individual –  the Mayor.  I have yet to hear of an instance or see a poll that indicates any Mayor in a Mayoral control district’s election has been decided by their management of the schools; I know that Mayor Daley will continue to be re-elected no matter what happens with the schools.   That’s not accountability.

A lot is happening with the resistance to mayoral control in Milwaukee.  Here’s a video on some of it:

Henry Hamilton of the NAACP Executive Committee and Christine Neumann-Ortiz — executive director of Voces de la Frontera — had a good recent column in the Journal-Sentinel: “In takeover, your vote silenced.”

Friend of AMPS and former candidate for State Superintendent Todd Allan Price has a long piece at CounterPunch that is worth the time: “Milwaukeeans vs. the Privatization Pandemic: Milwaukee League Comes to the Defense of Public Schools.”

Todd and I also co-wrote a Jerry Bracey inspired piece for FightingBob that includes some things on Mayoral control: “Bracey’s last stand”

Dominique Paul Noth’s lengthy “Barrett’s ‘cynical’ decision puts city Dems in bind” at the Milwaukee Area Labor Council is also worth the time spent.

Meanwhile the education DINO elite insider organization Democrats for Education Reform (DEF) has opened a Wisconsin office staffed by political lifer, convicted thief (see the Wisconsin State Journal, August 20, 2002), former strip club and school voucher PR flack Katy Venskus.

Alan J. Borsuk has a post up contrasting a recent DER event with the unanimous testimony against mayoral control at a recent public hearing.

Borsuk also covered Mayoral control researcher turned advocate Kenneth K. Wong’s recent visit to the state.  At the event and in the interview on WPT’s “Here and Now” below Wong offers a lot of double talk about elections and accountability, simplistically equating higher turnout at Mayoral elections with greater accountability on education matters.  This is only true if education is a decisive issue, otherwise it is nonsense.

Vodpod videos no longer available.
I think this quote from the Borsuck piece is revealing on how much Wong cares about keeping the public in public education:

It is best to have public support for mayoral control, he said, but it can still work even if it’s passed over major opposition.

“Nothing is easy,” he said. As for Milwaukee, he said, “It has to happen fast. . . . They should make it effective January 1.”

This crisis mentality is dangerous, especially when we are talking about a reform that by Wong’s own calculations will have a minimal impact on education in Milwaukee.  In his book The Education Mayor the achievement gap between Milwaukee and the rest of the state is pegged at 2.4 standard deviations; his research shows that “strong” mayoral control has produced gains of .2 to .33 standard deviations.  Accepting his data and the causality, that means that the best case Mayoral control scenario leaves Milwaukee students over 2 standard deviations behind the state.  As Wong himself states, “This is not a silver bullet.” So why the hurry?

In a not unrelated matter, people concerned about accountability should be talking about DINO Reform poster girl and DC Superintendent Michelle Rhee’s effort to intervene in an Inspector General’s investigation of her fiance, the charter school operator and now Mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson.  The IG was subsequently fired by the accountability loving Obama administration.  Links here and here.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | November 4, 2009 · 6:53 pm

The Cost of Commitment

Commitment

President Obama gave a speech at Wright Middle School in Madison today (text here) outlining his education reform initiative for the nation’s schools, called “Race to the Top,” sometimes referred to by some of his critics as the “Race off the Cliff.”

As Thomas Mertz has pointed out earlier, the amount of funds being discussed here for Wisconsin are relatively meager.

Make no mistake that this is cake, a treat, not life-sustaining bread.  The amount being discussed for Wisconsin is $80 million and this relative pittance would all be targeted for specific programs and when the $80 million is gone, Wisconsin would be stuck with more things that we can no longer afford.

So what type of reform would we be getting in this initiative, along with the modest dollars to come our way, and what would we be giving up in return? That was the crux of a letter sent yesterday by State Senator Mark Miller, chair of the Joint Committee on Finance, to Secretary Arne Duncan. He is worried like others in similar policy positions, that with all the current economic challenges out there blowing huge holes in states’ budgets across the country, that:

We do not have the fiscal resilience to sustain another long-term financial commitment based on the mere possibility that we may be awarded one-time federal dollars in the future. Once these proposed educational policy and fiscal changes are enacted into law, Wisconsin legislators and taxpayers will be responsible for the accompanying financial commitment regardless of the outcome of Wisconsin’s Race to the Top application. This promise to fund new requirements without the promise of federal dollars puts at risk other social safety net programs that rely on adequate state funding to operate.

He cited the example of costs associated with the implementation of a “Children’s Zone” in Wisconsin based upon a model developed for Harlem that could ultimately have ongoing costs to Wisconsin of more than $400 million. If you make such financial and policy commitments you must be able to have some good assurances that you can continue to pay for them. He likens the exercise in not knowing how the grant dollars will be allocated and for how long, to a gambler “trying to draw to an inside straight.”

The National Academy of Sciences recently issued a report offering recommendations on how to revise the funding guidelines and regulations of Obama/Duncan’s $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” grant program, and is well worth a read. Interestingly, the report all but neglects to mention charter schools, which are a major component of RTtT. You can read something I wrote on that subject the other day, here.

In a press release for the Academy’s study, they applauded the step of encouraging states to create systems of linking data on student achievement to teachers, since, as they noted, it is essential to conducting research about the best ways of evaluating teachers.

One way of evaluating teachers, currently the subject of intense interest and research, are value-added approaches, which typically compare a student’s scores going into a grade with his or her scores coming out of it, in order to assess how much “value” a year with a particular teacher added to the student’s educational experience.  The report expresses concern that the department’s proposed regulations place excessive emphasis on value-added approaches.  Too little research has been done on these methods’ validity to base high-stakes decisions about teachers on them.  A student’s scores may be affected by many factors other than a teacher — his or her motivation, for example, or the amount of parental support — and value-added techniques have not yet found a good way to account for these other elements.

The report also cautioned against the use of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a federal assessment instrument. While effective at monitoring broad trends, it will not be able to detect the type of specific effects of the targeted interventions that the RTtT hopes to fund. This infatuation with data can lead reformers, philanthropists (case in point, Bill Gates’ team up with RTtT-type initiatives) and bureaucrats to become unquestioning supporters of using test scores as indicators of real learning and teaching. As the study pointed out:

The choice of appropriate assessments for use in instructional improvement systems is critical. Because of the extensive focus on large-scale, high-stakes, summative tests, policy makers and educators sometimes mistakenly believe that such tests are appropriate to use to provide rapid feedback to guide instruction. This is not the case.

The report also urged caution when trying to apply such a blunt instrument towards making international comparisons.

We note that the difficulties that arise in comparing test results from different states apply even more strongly for comparing test results from different countries.

They conclude the report with a reiterated point, “careful evaluation of this spending should not be seen as optional; it is likely to be the only way that this substantial investment in educational innovation can have a lasting impact on the U.S. education system.”

And in another side note related to federal education financing, the Obama administration’s latest and most detailed information yet on the jobs created by the stimulus, noted that of the 640,239 jobs recipients claimed to have created or saved so far, more than half — 325,000 — were in education. Most were teachers’ jobs that states said were saved when stimulus money averted a need for layoffs.

Robert Godfrey

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by | November 4, 2009 · 5:03 pm

Obama at JC Wright, Quick Take

c1e82cf6-c97e-11de-a2ef-001cc4c03286.image

I spent the early part of the day at the Books not Bombs action with about 250 others and then went home to watch President Obama’s  speech at James C. Wright Middle School in Madison on television (transcript, here).  Here are some reactions.

The inspirational message, especially the words directed at students and parents was very good.   He was utterly right about the need to seize opportunities, value and support leaning and the importance teachers and parents working to have children internalize pride in academic achievement.  One of the best teachers my children have had  moved our son from racing to get his work done as fast as possible to completing assignments in a way that he could be proud of. Thanks Mr. Waters and thanks President Obama for this message.

He was also very good about the need to make education central to our national agenda.  A little too much about the economic aspects and too little about building an engaged citizenry for my taste, but good to hear.

As many speakers at the Books not Bombs made clear, this is not happening and as I observed in an earlier post the desperation of states for Race to the Top funds is ample evidence that we are not investing in education as we should.

This raises a basic contradiction between the rhetoric in the policies:  If education is as essential to our nation’s present strength and future well being as President Obama says it is, why must states compete for one-time grants to fund only a portion of the needed investments?  What about the states that don’t get grants, are their futures less crucial, are their children less deserving of educational opportunities.?

If we can spend $4 billion a week to keep the military in distant countries we should be able to fully fund the education of every child in every state.  When we spend billions on bombs, we shouldn’t have to ask for Pennies for Kids.

There were also some contradictions within the four core ideas behind Race to the Top that the President delineated.  Again, he was absolutely correct about the need for better assessments (I have doubts about the role of national standards in this process, but that is another issue), however Race to the Top is built expanded use of the inadequate assessments we have now.  Linking teacher pay to flawed tests doesn’t make sense.  Let’s work to create real, balanced and useful assessments first and then discuss what we should do with them.  Prioritizing data collection has similar problems.  We can have the best system for collecting and analyzing data, but if the data is bad to begin with, what is the point?  The old computer programmer phrase comes to mind: Garbage In, Garbage Out.  Obama is right that our current state assessments are near garbage; I just don’t understand how he can know that and still want to expand their use as the basis for decision-making.

It also bothered me that the President seemed to paint a picture of teacher’s currently making no use of assessments or feedback in shaping their teaching.  Every teacher uses many forms of feedback everyday; they see the looks on children’s faces and change their mode of explanation or offer words of encouragement; they grade homework and know what they did well and what they need to do differently; they evaluate exams and decide how to move forward.  This is basic to teaching and happened long before there was any talk of standardized tests and longitudinal data systems and will continue to happen whether the Race to the Top agenda is enacted or not.

President Obama is also correct about the need to attract to and keep the best in our classrooms.  My opinion is that the way to do this is to respect them as professionals, listen to them and not dictate reforms from above.  Recognize that perhaps the teacher who spends hours with students every day might have a better grasp of what is needed and a deeper understanding student progress than anything that will show up in a Value Added Analysis.   It isn’t that I think the data and analysis is useless, it is that I fear that by elevating data above humans we will shut our ears to those whose voices need to be heard and we will make teaching a less attractive vocation.  I’m looking for a better balance.

In his confident words about expanding the use of data and other things, I believe that President Obama grossly overstated and in places mis-stated what the research indicates.  A good example of this is the idea of school turnarounds.  In Chicago, now Secretary of Education Arne Duncan pursued an aggressive school shutdown and turnaround policy.  Through Race to the Top he is trying to nationalize it.  Well, the first research is in and it doesn’t look good.  Here is what the New York Times said:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan presided over the closing of dozens of failing schools when he was chief executive of the Chicago public schools from 2001 until last December. In his new post, he has drawn on those experiences, putting school turnaround efforts at the center of the nation’s education reform agenda.

Now a study by researchers at the University of Chicago concludes that most students in schools that closed in the first five years of Mr. Duncan’s tenure in Chicago saw little benefit.

“Most students who transferred out of closing schools re-enrolled in schools that were academically weak,” says the report, which was done by the university’s Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Furthermore, the disruptions of routines in schools scheduled to be closed appeared to hurt student learning in the months after the closing was announced, the researchers found.

There is much more of interest on “turnarounds” in this week’s National Journal experts blog.

On this and many other aspects of Race to the Top,  from linking teacher pay to test scores to charter school expansion, solid research often contradicts the claims of this administration.  At best the jury is still out on the reforms they are pushing; at worst the evidence is that enacting much of their program will make things worse.

I share the President’s desire for every child to have access to full and rich educational opportunities, to move the United States toward a culture that values teaching and learning.  I worry his plan for making this happen will move us  further from realizing these ideals.

Time to go help our younger son with his homework.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | November 2, 2009 · 6:20 pm

President Obama at James C. Wright Middle School — What Will He Say?

Obama QI don’t have any inside information about what President Obama will say when he visits James C. Wright Middle School in Madison on Wednesday, November 4, but I do have some thoughts about what he shouldn’t say, what I would like to hear him say  and some other things concerning his visit.

All indications are that Obama and Secretary  of Education are here to push Governor Jim Doyle’s Race to the Top (RttT) lottery ticket purchase plan.  This is wrong.  If  that’s what is going on then Obama and Duncan should be speaking to the legislature and not using the students and staff at Wright as props to lobby for their misguided reform incentive package.

I’d like to see the President come to Madison and announce a redirection of national priorities centered on full funding of education.  I’d like to see this President reallocate from militarism and Wall Street bailouts to investing directly in preparing the our children to build a better future.

If you’d like this too, I hope you can join us in a “Books not Bombs” action to be held outside the school at the intersection of Fish Hatchery and Wingra during the President’s visit, 10:00 AM to 12:00 Noon.  Details here.

The whole RttT lottery is evidence of how far we are from full funding and making education the priority it should be.

The history of underfunded Federal mandates in Special Education, Title I poverty programs and programs for English Language Learners is well known.  As Robert Godfrey recently noted on this site, the stimulus package required state funding be only at 2006 levels, resulting in flat or shrinking general education funding levels made up in part by one-time federal dollars and in many places steep property tax hikes.   The state stabilization funding was accompanied by welcome  new Title I and IDEA money, but this too is a one-time deal and the regular funding levels remain woefully inadequate.

States are struggling to limit cuts to levels that won’t be disastrous and have all but lost sight of sustainable full funding.  Schools aren’t starving (yet) but they are mighty hungry.

With the Race to the Top lottery Arne Duncan and President Obama are waving a small piece of cake before these hungry schools and saying “if you jump through these hoops we may give some of you one bite each.”

Make no mistake that this is cake, a treat, not life-sustaining bread.  The amount being discussed for Wisconsin is $80 million and this relative pittance would all be targeted for specific programs and when the $80 million is gone, Wisconsin would be stuck with more things that we can no longer afford.

Yet Wisconsin and other states are running toward those hoops Duncan is holding, shouting “how high should we jump,” because they are desperate for any education funding, no matter how small, how misdirected or how ephemeral.  As I write this, the Assembly Education Committee is fast tracking the legislation to get Wisconsin through those hoops.  Only in times this desperate could the chance at so little leverage so much.

I hate to see the staff and students at Wright being used in this cynical game.  I’d much rather they heard Obama at his best, inspiring hope and aspirations; speaking of the power and joy of teaching and learning, reminding one and all that  our public schools are basic to the promises of equality of opportunity; praising our educators and students for their accomplishments; and most of all congratulating the Wright community for their good work and telling the world in some detail how these things are happening at James C. Wright Middle School, despite the odds.

Sadly, I doubt we will get much of this.  The Doyle, Duncan, Obama education agenda is tangential, irrelevant or counter to what makes Wright a school we should be proud of.

Our older son finished 8th grade at Wright last year and I participated in the School Improvement Process as a “friendly observer” so I write from experience and with Panther Pride.  Some background on Wright first.

Wright is a small school, with relatively small (if limited in their offerings) classes and  a “Social Action” focus.  86% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunches, 39% are classified as English Language Learners; the racial and ethnic demographics are 1% Native American, 38% African American,  37% Hispanic, 12% Asian and  13% White.

As measured by state standardized tests (with the notation that this is a very limited measure of teaching, learning and school quality) Wright does well by most students and better than most schools for poor and minority students.  here are some graphs:

CFT1103_1356442D7

From the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, click for WINSS site.

 

CFT1103_13565637

From the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, click for WINSS site.

There are still gaps in achievement and the test scores in other subjects are not as strong, but the general picture is of a relatively successful school.

In other areas, where data is of even more limited utility, Wright is a very successful school.  There is a sense of community and an atmosphere of caring that transcends (but does not obliterate) racial, ethnic and economic differences.  The staff function as a professional, collaborative team much of the time.  In general there is pride, Panther Pride that encourages all to do their best and encourages all to aspire to do even better.  Through the social action focus, Wright seeks to bring this “we can do better” message to the wider community.  I can’t write this without once again crediting Principal Nancy Evans and the entire staff for these accomplishments and thanking them for all they do.

Reviewing the Doyle, Duncan, Obama agenda, I don’t see much that would help Wright get better and I see some things that will make it harder for Wright to maintain the quality and qualities they have achieved.

Due to the cuts in education funding in the recent state budget, Madison — like so many other districts — is looking at a very difficult budget in 2010-11.  Doyle, Duncan and Obama aren’t offering any help at all with this.  A difficult budget will likely mean that small class sizes, particularly those at Wright where they are below the norm for the district, will be targeted.

The support staff at Wright is already minimal, with psychologists, social workers, librarians and others only in the school a day or two or three a week.  That too could get worse (see here for a report of what is happening in Minnesota).

The demographics of the school highlight the importance of funding for students in poverty and English language Learners.  The state of Wisconsin provides no poverty aid beyond the limited SAGE program for the early grades, state reimbursements for English Language Learners as a percentage of costs have been falling for over a decade and the Federal money in both these areas remains small.  None of the current proposals from Doyle (or Duncan and Obama) do anything to fix this.

Much of the agenda they are pushing has to do with more data and more uses of data.  It is hard to be against better assessments, better collection of data and better coordination in the use of data; but most of this is a distraction and is linked in their agenda to misguided noti0ns of national standards and expanded use of flawed test data to make decisions about almost everything, including teacher compensation (Doyle’s legislation on the last, here).

One at a time on data issues, mostly in the “for further reading” mode.

On National standards, I recommend reading what what Deborah Meir wrote here and checking out what William A. Proefriedt has to say to understand how the standards movement is working to undermine the engaged democratic ideals at the base of Wright’s social action mission.  This recent report that the development of standards development is being shaped by profit motives of the participants is also worth a look.

On the limits of data and data analysis and their potential for abuse, the recent letter to Secretary Duncan from the Board on Testing and Assessment of the  National Research Council is a must read.

Linking teacher compensation to test scores is wrong in so many ways.  Just three things for now; it prioritizes test scores in selected subjects as the be-all-and-end-all of education, shunting aside all those things Wright that make it not just a “relatively successful school” but a great school; it has great potential to undermine collaboration and professional relationships; and it doesn’t appear to work, even by the crude measures of standardized tests.

Duncan, Obama and now Doyle like charter schools and Wright is technically a charter school.  Technically is the key word.  There is nothing about the governance of Wright that is any different than any other school in Madison.  The charter status is a historical artifact.   If they want to use Wright to make the case for charter expansion, they picked the wrong example.  Expanding charters won’t help Wright and it probably won’t help create more Wrights.

While on the topic of charters, it is also worth noting that the pedagogy and curriculum of one of Duncan’s favorite charter groups — KIPP — is the exact opposite of the engaged, questioning, challenging lessons that Wright teaches as the basis for social action.  Jim Horn has posted on this aspect of KIPP many times, see here, here and here for examples.

A few last words on Mayoral control and some other ways that the Doyle, Duncan, Obama agenda is working against the ideal of an engaged citizenry having a voice in public education, how what they are pushing and how they are pushing it undermines the social action ideas of Reverend James C. Wright and the school that bears his name.

Mayoral control and the pending legislation for State Superintendent takeovers of districts “in need of improvement” (no further requirements spelled out. just that the State Superintendent says they need improvement) if implemented will make it more difficult for activists to be involved in their schools.  School Board campaigns are local, grassroots efforts.  Mayoral and State-wide campaigns are mostly about money and advertising.  In the first, candidates meet people and listen.  In the latter they craft messages based on polling.

Once in office,  School Board members are relatively accessible; Mayors and State Superintendents are busy and difficult to reach.  In practice, the public has an opportunity to testify at most Board meetings.  Mayors tend to listen to power brokers and though I like Tony Evers (and even met with him once), I don’t believe he has held any public “listening sessions.”

These proposals won’t completely shut the public out, but they will mute the voices of the grass roots.

The voices of the grass roots have also been muted in the way the RttT legislation is being handled in Wisconsin.  Governor Doyle  issued general outlines a couple of weeks ago with few of the all-important details.  The first batch of legislation was introduced Friday 10/29 and the first hearing was scheduled for today (Monday, 11/2).  As of this morning there weren’t even Legislative Fiscal Bureau notes attached. Full floor votes in both houses may be scheduled before the end of next week (the session is scheduled to end Friday, but will likely be extended).

This isn’t enough time to analyze, much less organize and mobilize.

I’d like to hear President Obama and Governor Doyle explain to the students at Wright how this accelerated schedule serves the democratic process and why it is necessary to make it so difficult for students and others concerned with the future of education in Wisconsin to have their voices heard.

This is no more likely than the promise of new priorities and pledge of  full educational funding I wished for at the top of this post.

So in closing, I’ll express my hope for one thing that I think may actually happen:  President Obama, please be sure to spend some time with “Mother” Jacqueline Wright and share some of the stories of Mother and Reverend Wright’s activism with the world.  If, as you do this  you are reminded of why it is so important that voices from the outside be heard in the halls of power and have some second thoughts about the rest of the agenda for your visit, please heed those thoughts.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | October 23, 2009 · 5:52 pm

Education: Dressed & Ready for Stimulation

Photograph by David Wahl

Photograph by David Wahl

The National Access Network has highlighted the U.S. Department of Educations (USDOE) Office of the Inspector General’s report that has raised concerns over states’ use of stimulus funds.

The American Renewal and Recovery Act (ARRA) statute requires states to provide several assurances, including commitments to fund K-12 and higher education at least at FY 2006 levels and to promote reform in four areas, in order to receive these monies. The report noted however, that several states have capitalized on the flexibility of the funding requirements, to use stimulus funds to supplant rather than supplement education budgets. On AMPS we have highlighted this same issue for Wisconsin on a number of occasions, see here and here.

The department’s report contended that it has made an effort to close some funding loopholes by including funding maintenance as a consideration for awarding the so-called “Race to the Top” funds.

Equity advocates, however, have argued that this provision does not do enough, as the guidelines focus on proportional levels of funding rather than absolute figures. That is, the regulations leave the door open for states to cut the total budget from year-to-year and remain competitive applicants.

As the Access Network has noted:

The information the states have submitted raises serious questions about whether the stated purposes of the Act – stabilizing education funding, facilitating the continuation of equity and adequacy formula adjustments and promoting education reforms to boost student achievement – are being met. The goal of boosting student achievement is to be promoted through commitments from each state to promote four essential areas of reform: 1) improving teacher effectiveness; 2) making progress toward college and career-ready standards and rigorous assessments; 3) enhancing data systems to track educational practice; and 4) improving achievement in low-performing schools.

Only the first of these three goals appears to have been achieved. Virtually all of the states have stabilized their funding levels for FY 2010 at the previous years level, with the application of the federal stimulus funds. (In many instances, however, this flat funding will nevertheless result in substantial cuts in educational services since mandatory cost increases will not be covered.)

In the vastly underfunded state education systems throughout the country, stabilizing funding levels may have been

unduly emphasized at the expense of the equity and reform goals of the ARRA, as some states apparently increased their anticipated education deficits upon learning that substantial federal funding for education was in the offing, in order to limit planned cuts in other areas of the budget. Although some officials might argue that such maneuvers represented prudent budget planning, from the perspective the intent of the ARRA and the constitutional pre-eminence given to education in most state constitutions, such maneuvers clearly raise serious legal issues.

A number of advocates for educational equity have called on the DOE to require states to fund low performing schools at adequate levels. The way the current regulations are drafted, only one provision has a focus on this kind of funding. The Campaign for Educational Equity for example, has proposed a requirement that states need to provide data that shows to what extent the proportion of each state’s budget devoted to education for FY 2009 either increased, decreased or remained the same compared to FY 2008. The assumption is that those states who have maintained or increased educational funding during the last fiscal year would receive some favorable consideration in the review process for doing so. But additionally, the campaign has argued that any reform conditions that seek to assist struggling schools should include specifically the various resources identified through adequacy case law that are deemed necessary comprehensive services for students from poverty backgrounds. Further, they’ve advocated for the DOE to require states to increase their total and per pupil state and local revenues that meet the average levels of all states, or if the state is more affluent, then maintain their current funding levels. That requirement would also include states having to allocate higher levels of funding to school districts with higher levels of poverty. The DOE is meant to issue final guidelines quite shortly and grant applications will then be due and phase 1 monies will be distrubuted in early 2010.

Exactly where Wisconsin is on the supplanting vs. supplementing continuum remains to be seen. A report card from this July of each state can be found here. We’ll keep you posted.

Robert Godfrey

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