Graphic Essay: Betsy DeVos' 'School Choice' Movement Isn't Social Justice. It's a Return to Segregation.

Charters and vouchers have always been intended to break public schools, and wrest education away from the public commons. "School choice," a phrase coined by segregationists, has always been about maintaining and exacerbating segregation by race and class.

Graphic Essay: Betsy DeVos' 'School Choice' Movement Isn't Social Justice. It's a Return to Segregation. by Adam Bessie and Erik Thurman is a powerful piece that makes complex concepts easy to understand. It's a excellent thing to share with non-academics regarding the scourge of school privatization via charters-vouchers. I've included a quote and a teaser from the piece below.

http://socialjusticequotations.tumblr.com/post/160327844183/the-school-choice-system-is-jim-crow-education

https://charterschoolfacts.tumblr.com/post/160327683353/graphic-essay-betsy-devos-school-choice

I can't think of anyone as profoundly ignorant, or as uniquely unqualified to be appointed Secretary of Education as Betsy…

I can't think of anyone as profoundly ignorant, or as uniquely unqualified to be appointed Secretary of Education as Betsy…

…oh, wait, never-mind.

Let's not forget that neoliberal school privatization is a bipartisan project. Both parties fail education.

A natural progression of neoliberalism

• Rod Paige
• Margaret Spellings
• Arne Duncan
• John King
• Betsy DeVos

Not opposing the neoliberal corporate education reform agenda when Democrats were in charge is what led to the DeVos disaster. Not unlike how the Hillary Rodham Clinton camp's "Elevating Pied Piper Candidates" led to the Trump fiasco.

Neoliberal Corporate Education Reform… for “other” peoples’ kids

“CCSS assume an American population embodied with a similar history of freedom and cultural ‘neutrality’ or ‘universality’” — Donald H. Smith, Ph.D.

The Atlantic has a surprisingly candid piece entitled “A Public-School Paradox” about the hypocrisy of the establishment elite in Washington not sending their own offspring to public schools. This has been exacerbated by the fact that the most vociferous neoliberal corporate education reform proponents — like Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, and Hillary Rodham Clinton — are all private school parents. Disconnected and disinvested from the public commons, they advocate for horrific, racist, classist “reforms” that only serve to widen the gap between working class families and themselves. Especially disturbing is this trio of Democratic politicians’ full-throated support of the white supremacist Common Core State Standards (CCSS), a curriculum from which their own scion were spared. This is equally true, if not more so, for reactionary, right-wing troglodytes like Donald J. Trump, whose, as The Atlantic piece points out: “five children all attend(ed) private schools”. It’s almost a given that George W. Bush, whose contempt of public schools was apparent in his support of segregationist charter schools and imposing NCLB on a hapless nation, would have sent his scion to private schools while president, had they been that age.

My brief comments in reaction to the piece follow.

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Sidwell Friends School is the polar opposite of the horrific KIPP dungeons Obama advocates for other POC kids. My editor at Schools Matter — Dr. Jim Horn — has been publishing chapters from his book on KIPP, but I have a paper copy I’ll read once the MPRE is over. It was Horn that coined the phrase “cultural sterilization” to describe the no excuses model inflicted on students. I can’t think of a better way to frame it, nor anything more removed from the experience of establishment elitists that advocate it for “other” peoples’ children.

Asshat!

When she reminded us the other day of Arne Duncan's spin after the 2013 bump in NAEP scores and after the 2015 dip in NAEP scores, Valerie Strauss captured for us what blatant ideology can breed in the ethically septic mouth of a fool:

. . . . reformers who have touted NAEP score increases in the past as evidence of  success are now trying to spin the newest results as anything but their the failure of their reforms. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in 2013 for example, credited Common Core implementation for higher NAEP scores in some states. He said:

“In 2013, reading and math scores edged up nationally to new highs for fourth and eighth graders. It is particularly heartening that reading scores for eighth graders are up, after remaining relatively flat for the last decade. Achievement among the largest minority group in our nation’s public schools—Hispanic students—is also up since 2011. And higher-achieving students as a whole are making more progress in reading and math than in recent years.

“While progress on the NAEP continues to vary among the states, all eight states that had implemented the state-crafted Common Core State Standards at the time of the 2013 NAEP assessment showed improvement in at least one of the Reading and/or Mathematics assessments from 2009 to 2013—and none of the eight states had a decline in scores. [Emphasis added]

Fast forward to today, and Duncan has a different explanation for the lower scores. Brown reported:

Duncan defended those policies in a call with reporters Tuesday, saying that massive changes in schools often lead to a temporary drop in test scores while teachers and students adjust. But the new standards and other policies, Duncan said, are poised to improve student achievement — and students’ lives — in the long term.

“Big change never happens overnight,” Duncan said. “I’m confident that over the next decade, if we stay committed to this change, we will see historic improvements.”

Good News: Duncan Is Done. Now for the Bad News . . .

Story here.

Didn't dullard Duncan say Katrina was the best thing to happen to New Orleans?

“…let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina.” — Arne Duncan

The absolute worst education President, and Secretary of Education in U.S. history.

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For Immediate Release: May 13, 2015
Contact: Madison Donzis, madison@fitzgibbonmedia.com, 210.488.6220

New Report Exposes Holes in Louisiana’s Charter School Program and Millions in Taxpayer Dollars Wasted on a Broken System

Coalition for Community School New Orleans and the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) Highlight Consequences of Louisiana’s Failed Academic and Financial Oversight of Charter Schools

**See the report here: http://bit.ly/1Fc50qR** 

A new report released this week finds that the drastic growth of overinvestment in charter schools and underinvestment in oversight has left Louisiana’s students, parents, teachers and taxpayers at risk of academic failures and financial fraud. The report, “System Failure: Louisiana’s Broken Charter School Law” cites billions of taxpayer dollars plunged into charter schools since Hurricane Katrina hit, including over $831 million in the 2014-15 school year alone. 

Since 2005, charter school enrollment in the state has grown 1,188 percent. The Louisiana Department of Education’s Recovery School District, originally created to facilitate state takeover of struggling schools, is now the first charter-only school district in the country. 

The report identifies five fundamental flaws with the financial and academic oversight of Louisiana’s charter schools: 

1.    Oversight depends too heavily on self-reporting by charter schools or the reports of whistleblowers. Louisiana’s oversight agencies rely almost entirely on audits paid for by the charters themselves and whistleblowers. While important to uncover fraud, neither method systematically detects or effectively prevents fraud. 

2.    The general auditing techniques used in charter school reports do not uncover fraud on their own. The audits commissioned by the charter schools use general auditing techniques designed to expose inaccuracies or inefficiencies. Without audits specifically designed to detect and uncover fraud, however, state and local agencies will rarely detect deliberate fraud without a whistleblower.

3.    Inadequate staffing prevents the thorough detection and elimination fraud. Louisiana inadequately staffs its charter-school oversight agencies. In order to carry out high-quality audits of any type, auditors need enough time. With too few qualified people on staff—and too little training for existing staff—agencies are unable to uncover clues that might lead to fuller investigations and the discovery of fraud.

4.    Underinvestment in systems that help struggling schools succeed. Lawmakers and regulators have invested in systems that set high standards and then close schools that fail to meet them, rather than helping them improve to meet the standards. This investment in a severe accountability system does not support schools achieve academic success.

5.    Heavy reliance on data that is vulnerable to manipulation. The state’s academic oversight system relies largely on sets of data that can be manipulated by regulators, authorizers, or the charters themselves. Without reliable data, schools, parents and the public have no way to accurately gauge academic quality at their schools.

Since 2005, approximately $700 million in public tax dollars has been spent on charter schools that currently have not achieved a C or better on the state’s grading system. As the state has insufficiently resourced financial oversight, it has failed to create a structure that provides struggling schools and their students with a pathway to academic success. Coupled with an unwillingness to help failing schools succeed, the rapid growth of charters has failed Louisiana children, families and taxpayers. 

The report calls for a set of core reforms to end the hemorrhaging of public funds to fraudulent charter schools and also calls on state and federal lawmakers to put systems in place to prevent fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. To address the serious deficiencies in Louisiana school districts, the Center for Popular Democracy and CCS suggest mandating new measures designed to detect and prevent fraud, increasing financial transparency and accountability, redesigning the data collection process, and redesigning the system to support struggling schools.

### 

The Center for Popular Democracy is a nonprofit organization that promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base- building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country.

Coalition for Community Schools New Orleans (CCS) is a New Orleans alliance of parent, youth and community organizations and labor groups fighting for educational justice and equity in access to school resources and opportunities.

New Report Exposes Holes in Louisiana’s Charter School Program and Millions in Taxpayer Dollars Wasted on a... by Robert D. Skeels

Duncan Blames Parents for Testing Trauma--Threatens Federal Intervention for Out Out

If there is anything that can turn an opt-out firestorm into a complete conflagration that could consume the entire testing-industrial complex, it would be threats from the corporate bureaucrat, Arne Duncan.   

And sure enough, he delivered on Tuesday:

 U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday that the federal government is obligated to intervene if states fail to address the rising number of students who are boycotting mandated annual exams.

Duncan’s comments come as an “opt out” advocacy group in New York reports that more than 184,000 students statewide out of about 1.1 million eligible test takers refused to take last week’s English exams. In New York City, nearly 3,100 students out of about 420,000 test takers opted out, according to the group. (Math testing begins Wednesday.)

Last year, 49,000 students statewide did not take the English exams, while just over 1,900 New York City students sat out the tests, state officials have said. State and city officials have not yet released their own opt-out counts this year or verified those of the advocacy group, United to Counter the Core, whose unofficial tally is based on information from district superintendents, school employees, and media reports.

Those estimates suggesting that more than 15 percent of students refused to take the tests have raised questions about the consequences for districts. Federal law requires all students in grades three to eight to take annual tests, and officials have said districts could face sanctions if fewer than 95 percent of students participate. On Tuesday, when asked whether states with many test boycotters would face consequences, Duncan said he expected states to make sure districts get enough students take the tests.

“We think most states will do that,” Duncan said during a discussion at the Education Writers Association conference in Chicago. “If states don’t do that, then we have an obligation to step in.”
Duncan also said that students in some states are tested too much, and acknowledged that the exams are challenging for many students. But he argued that annual standardized exams are essential for tracking student progress and monitoring the score gap between different student groups.

He also said the tests are “just not a traumatic event” for his children, who attend public school in Virginia.

“It’s just part of most kids’ education growing up,” he said. “Sometimes the adults make a big deal and that creates some trauma for the kids.” . . .. .

Duncan Drives into Dead End, Really

In Chicago today to visit one of his favorite corporate reform schools.  He saw protestors waiting for him to arrive at a school and had his Suburban driver blast down an alley to take a shortcut to avoid them.  Whoops, dead end.  So what happens?  He has to walk out with teachers and parents screaming about PARCC.  What does he do?  Ignore them.  

Is this pure poetry, or what?

Reality Check: Why Accept What the Feds Are Offering?

Monty Neill finds himself in the unenviable, though totally expected, position of doing PR for the corporate unions, who find themselves in bed with Arne Duncan and Bill Gates on testing.  Here is what Monty posted to all the lists:

Reality check.

One person emailed me to ask the meaning of 'grade span.' It means a requirement to test annually once in each of grades 3-5, 6-9 and 10-12, in reading/ELA, math and science. This is what the 1994 law called for (tho without science) and it was quite livable if states did not attach sanctions - and most did not.

The context is the House bill for a new ESEA which removes AYP and federally mandated sanctions. Thus, amount of testing and sanctions is kicked back to the states. Not a prayer in hell the Rs will tell the states they have to do less testing or not take punitive actions, but they can and do stop mandating the punishment and reduce testing to potentially low stakes in 3 grades. Alexander's bill is similar in allowing grade span as well as other reasonable options. Fundamentally, if they remove sanctions and AYP and the requirement to judge teachers by student scores and allow grade-span, states and then districts will be able to restore rationality. many will only do so if pushed by parents, students, teachers and other community members - but we'd have a far greater chance to win if federally mandated testing were only 3 grades and with no mandated punishments, not 'adequate yearly progress.' It is that or continue with what we have, there is no 'no test' alternative remotely feasible at this juncture.

So tell me, Monty, why should the eminently feasible solution satisfy those who want fairness in testing?  Or is that name, FairTest, just something that was dreamed up to raise money to do PR for the NEA and AFT.  Maddening.


You know that the only only fair test is local, low stakes, and designed to improve learning.  Any other kind is unethical.  It is the unethical variety that "fairtest" has signed on to: high stakes, summative, punishing, and intended to pave the way for more privatization.  And this is what the feds are offering.  Why settle?  Why not stand on principle and for what we know will happen if people stand up the oligarchs?  They are on the defensive.  By not standing for what is right, you have become that which we once thought you were fighting.

You have become the problem.  You are it.

Duncan to Double Down on NCLB High Stakes Testing

For those prone to fits of fanciful thinking about the imminent demise of the CorpEd testing regime, tune in to hear Arne Duncan's speech tomorrow:

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post News Service
Posted Jan. 9, 2015 @ 5:38 pm

WASHINGTON — As a new Congress gets to work to rewrite the 2002 federal education law known as No Child Left Behind, the Obama administration is drawing what Education Secretary Arne Duncan calls his "line in the sand": The federal government must continue to require states to give annual, standardized tests in reading and math.

In a speech scheduled for Monday at an elementary school in Washington, Duncan is expected to insist that any new law retain the trademark of No Child Left Behind, requiring that every public school student be tested annually in math and reading in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school, and also be tested in science at three points during those years. . . .


Read more: http://www.sj-r.com/article/20150109/News/150109534#ixzz3OX8GcAcC

What If, Indeed!

Arne Duncan has set off a furious response with his tweet, 

"What if every district committed both to identifying what made their 5 best schools successful & providing those opps to all their students?"

I have a few what ifs of my own. 

What if:

• the federal government incentivized integrated public education, rather than segregated corporate reform schools?
• corporate foundations committed funds to ending childhood poverty?
• CEOs recognized that capitalism is amoral and public institutions are not?
• Arne Duncan woke up one day as a human being, instead of a cockroach?
• we accepted the idea that poverty is not due to character flaws that can be fixed by changing children's brain functions?
• Bill Gates discovered that he is, indeed, the self-serving sonofabitch that the majority of people know him to be?
• Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody committed as much energy to resisting CorpEd as they do to building their fan base? 
• Wendy Kopp insisted her clueless troops wear armbands and lapel pins with PP for Positive Pedagogy?
• FairTest did something other than beg for money and post all the work that others are doing?
• Congress passed laws to enforce the Fair Housing Act and, thus, enable integrated living?
• our leaders took global warming seriously, rather than preparing for the police state to contain the eventual mayhem that will come from pursuing the status quo?
• the citizenry acted more out of hope than fear?
• schools got so repressive that children stopped going and parents stopped sending them?
• hackers brought down the Common Core data collection system on test days?
• parents kept their children home on test days because they were sick of testing?
• we stopped pretending that educational equality can be accomplished without human equality?
• businesses got out of the education field and focused on new products and services that make us healthy and whole? 
• Arne Duncan stopped pretending that context is irrelevant and that everyone can do the same thing the same way and get the same result?

What's your What If?

A Response to Gates/Duncan

from Peg Robertson at her blog:

Please comment on this article Arne Duncan: A test for school tests. Even if you have time for just one line of comment - we must not allow these lies to stand as truth. Thank you everyone.

Here is my comment on the article:

First - we must understand that the call for less testing is simply an appeasement - and a distraction - from the privatization agenda which requires immense testing PLUS the full implementation of the common core standards. The high stakes testing and the common core standards MUST stay in place if corporations wish to continue cashing in on public education to the tune of 800 billion dollars and growing. So, Arne can say whatever he wants to attempt to appease the public but we must understand clearly that the goal is to privatize. And they will happily decrease the testing to appease the public so that they can continue to dismantle the public school system.

These tests test what matters least. None of these tests support instruction, unless of course your goal is to teach to the test - which requires becoming savvy at multiple choice and formulaic writing. In our public schools the testing never ends. At the elementary school level we are testing weekly in some shape or form. The common core standards, upon which all this testing and curriculum is based, are developmentally inappropriate, not internationally benchmarked and not based on research. The PARCC test, which Arne claims is oh so fabulous, has no peer review research to demonstrate that it is valid. PARCC is an experiment. Experiments require informed consent. There is no parental informed consent for the PARCC experiment, which public school children in Colorado will be subjected to this year.

The PARCC is already estimated to fail 70% of our children. When CMAS social studies and science scores come out on October 27th, the citizens of Colorado will also see that Colorado's children have failed those tests. Then, watch the corporate reformers say - YES - see??? Our schools are failing! Our children are failing! Our teachers are bad! Watch them add more common core curriculum (Which by the way is nothing but test prep of the worst kind...mundane, boring and requires children to practice for the common core tests day in and day out using all the new fancy technology necessary for these tests.) Watch them fire more teachers because our evaluation will be tied to these tests and since 70% of the children will fail it - well, you do the math. Watch the schools buy more technology in order to increase test scores  and watch the CDE gather more student data because data is the new gold. Watch this data get shared with corporations so they can churn out more products and better manage and monitor our children.

Watch teachers spend more time getting trained to administer tests versus actual professional development to support teaching. In the last year I have received "professional development" on how to administer TCAP, ACCESS, PALS, and TS Gold and CMAS. I wonder what new tests will be ushered in next year? Oh yes - and I have received "professional development" on new common core curriculum which is scripted - for the day in which teachers will simply be teacher as technician. Look up Carpe Diem schools if you are wondering what that looks like. The end goal is to have very few experienced teachers - that would be dangerous as we know too much. Teacher as data puncher is all that is needed in the privatization agenda. Thinking is dangerous  - we might wake up the masses  - and then the cash flow would end. Teachers must be obedient and follow the rules of the privatization agenda, therefore, making sure that our evaluation is tied to these high stakes tests keeps us silent as we teach to the test. It also pits teacher against child as teachers soon realize that their livelihood depends on the test scores of these children.

Watch specifically in the urban areas, where children live in poverty and do not have books or computers at home which already puts them at a disadvantage for these online tests. Not to mention that they are hungry, many are sick, and many are tired due to having no consistent place to sleep at night. These children in poverty already suffer from toxic stress which damages the pre-frontal cortex of their brain - add toxic testing and toxic test prep to the mix and the damage increases. Watch these schools get labeled as failing schools - when in truth they are abandoned schools. Watch the reformers come in and hand them over to a charter, fire the staff, and usher in Teach for America folks who have 5 weeks of teacher training. Watch them continue to ignore poverty.

Meanwhile, when teachers do nothing but test and test prep day in and day out, we have no time to actually support the learner. This nonsense about "college and career ready" is so short sighted. What about problem solving citizens?  The common core and high stakes testing together are designed to destroy our public schools. The federal mandates under Race to the Top have opened the door wide to allow corporations to cash in using our children's data . If we hope to stop it, we need to revolt by refusing to allow our children to take these tests. I, personally, have refused to administer the PARCC test. See here, and I will continue to support parents in refusing these tests.  If anyone expects politicians, or mainstream media - such as the lovely Denver Post - to listen to anything that speaks to the truth, it will require a full-on revolt from the parents. Starve the beast - no data means no profit - game over. If I can help let me know. My email is writepeg@juno.com and my blog is 
www.pegwithpen.com

Duncan Sacrifices Student Welfare to Preserve Corporate Agenda

During the summer of 2001, as NCLB was moving toward its final mark-up, testing experts were waving a red flag over the 100 percent testing proficiency target for 2014. Thomas Kane and Douglas Staiger published their red flag as an op-ed in the New York Times that pointed to what was about to happen if the bill proceeded with the the insane proficiency target intact--the poorest schools and the most diverse schools would receive the most punishment before anyone else.

Both [Senate and House] bills would be particularly harsh on racially diverse schools. Each school would be expected to achieve not only an increase in test scores for the school as a whole, but increases for each and every racial or ethnic group as well. Because each group's scores fluctuate depending upon the particular students being tested each year, it is rare to see every group's performance moving upward in the same year. Black and Latino students are more likely than white students to be enrolled in highly diverse schools, so their schools would be more likely than others to be arbitrarily disrupted by a poorly designed formula.

What Kane and Staiger could not see was that, in the black hearts of Washington ideologues, their prime motivation was disruption of public schools, beginning with the poorest and most vulnerable.  Kane and Staiger didn't know those crafting the bill wanted to blow up public education and replace it with "market solutions."  They didn't know a cruel calculus and crude algorithm had been designed to prove the failure of the public schools, and it had been planted in NCLB and then covered over with the civil rights banner of leaving no child behind.  Truly a Satanic level of cynicism.

Staiger and Kane concluded:

In their current bills, the House and Senate have set a very high bar, so high that it is likely that virtually all school systems would be found to be inadequate, with many schools failing. And if that happens, the worst schools would be lost in the crowd. The resources and energy required to reform them would probably be dissipated. For these schools, a poorly designed federal rule can be worse than no rule at all. 

Needless to say, the warnings were ignored and NCLB was quickly approved in the wake of 9-11. 

And it worked like a charm.  By the time Barack Obama was elected in 2008, half of America's public schools were not making testing proficiency targets, and the mass conversion of the poorest urban schools to corporate charters was well underway.  Private tutoring companies were raking in billions, and Reading First contracts were funneling billions more to McGraw-Hill and Pearson.

To maintain the momentum of corporate takeover and to expand profitability into the technology sectors, Duncan/Gates devised a plan of extortion and bribery that would move states to sign on to new federal mandates in order to avoid the certain failure that was headed their way by 2014 if they did not.  Race to the Top offered would offer more money to states left desperate following the 2008 Crash, but to get the money, states had to sign on to Common Core (with online testing), removal of charter school caps that would allow accelerated expansion of charters, and value added test-based teacher evaluations that would be used to run off all those real teachers who refused to have the worth of their profession determined by a gain score from a junk test. 

There was a problem, however.  The National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences had issued, what's that!, another red flag, this time about using value-added test scores for high stakes purposes.  In fact, they wrote a 17 page letter during the RTTT pre-approval comment period to Arne Duncan stating the folly of using value added for high stakes purposes.  That was in the Fall of 2009.  Gates/Duncan proceeded without blinking, just as the Bush Gang had in the Fall of 2001when NCLB was ready for launch. 

In the Spring 2014, this fateful year for those who did not respond to the extortion and bribery by Duncan/Gates, the American Statistical Association underscored the NRC and NAS conclusions from 2009, with its own blistering appraisal of the continued use of value added testing for high stakes purposes.  This time Duncan/Gates responded by simply saying the scientists were wrong.

Which brings us the New York Times article today about what is going on in the state of Washington, where legislators have defied the the extortion and bribery schemes to expand the corporate takeover of public education. In doing so, they have awakened the insane proficiency mandates of NCLB, which remains in effect for those who will not go along with value-added test based teacher evaluations.  Here's a clip:

SEATTLE — Three years ago, Lakeridge Elementary School, where most pupils come from lower-income families, was totally remade. A new principal arrived and replaced half the staff, and she lengthened the school day and year. Working with a $3 million federal grant, the staff collaborated with the University of Washington to train teachers in new instructional techniques. The results were powerful: Test scores soared.

Yet just before school resumed for this fall, Lakeridge learned that it had been declared a failing school under federal education law.

In fact, nearly nine in 10 Washington State public schools, including some high-achieving campuses in the state’s most moneyed communities, have been relegated to a federal blacklist of failure, requiring them to set aside 20 percent of their federal funding for private tutoring or to transport students to schools not on the failing list, if parents wish.

The schools in Washington are caught in the political crossfire of a battle over education policy. Because the State Legislature has refused to require that teacher evaluations be based in part on student test scores, schools are being held to an outdated benchmark that is all but impossible to achieve — that by 2014, every single student would be proficient in reading and math. Thousands of schools in California, Iowa, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming have also been declared failing for the same reason. . . .

Gates/Duncan remain unmoved by the millions of students being cheated as a result of insane federal rules that are written to benefit corporations:

Mr. Duncan said he wanted states . . . to use student test performance as one of several measures to rate teachers. “The goal of teaching is students learning,” he said. “And this is a piece of evaluating what students are learning.”

Got that?  I close with a clip from the most recent reminder from the ASA to Duncan/Gates of the unethical, unreliable, and invalid use for which they insist on using to turn children into test scores for the benefit of the Oligarchs.

·      VAMs are generally based on standardized test scores, and do not directly measure potential teacher contributions toward other student outcomes.

·      VAMs typically measure correlation, not causation: Effects – positive or negative – attributed to a teacher may actually be caused by other factors that are not captured in the model.

·      Under some conditions, VAM scores and rankings can change substantially when a different model or test is used, and a thorough analysis should be undertaken to evaluate the sensitivity of estimates to different models.

·      VAMs should be viewed within the context of quality improvement, which distinguishes aspects of quality that can be attributed to the system from those that can be attributed to individual teachers, teacher preparation programs, or schools.

·      Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions. Ranking teachers by their VAM scores can have unintended consequences that reduce quality.

Lily Gives Arne a Big Hug

From MicroSoftNBC:

Despite the education secretary’s outwardly nonchalant reaction to the NEA vote [calling for his resignation], García says he seemed “hurt” and “surprisingly confused.” In her estimation, he didn’t realize the level of anger he had conjured up.

“Arne Duncan is not a bad man,” she said. “I think he sincerely believes this stuff.”
Despite their differences, says García, they ended the meeting with a hug.

By Lily's measure, Hitler and Stalin were not bad men, either.  After all, they believed the "stuff" they were doing.

Arne Duncan Praises Worsening Segregation and Calls It A Tribute to Brown v Board

Arne Duncan was in Tennessee last month to deliver the keynote at a corporate Education Writers Association.  Duncan loves Tennessee, as it represents one of the few states that has remained loyal to the RTTT plan devised by the Gates Foundation.

Since 2009 Duncan has been spewing the bromide that education is the civil rights issue of our time, but in Nashville in May, Duncan took his game up a notch.  Now he's claiming that equality means equalizing test score results.  Once that is done, by whatever means necessary (see documented brutality of KIPP and KIPP knock-offs), the equality will have been achieved without ever spending a nickel or minute on the structural issues that our nation continues to ignore in the same way we ignore our rotting bridges, highways, water systems, etc.

This is from the corporate pretend news source, Chalkbeat:

Citing the 60th anniversary of Brown vs Board of education decision, which once held schools accountable for racial integration, Duncan said this generation must hold schools accountable for academic outcomes that are still unequal.

“Without accountability there is no imperative to face the hard truths of our education system,” Duncan said.

Like the old civil rights battles, Duncan said the modern ones require winning local support. He described four teachers he met recently at a Tennessee school who spent their evening at a student’s softball game, earning the trust of that student’s mother.

“Tennessee’s example in the history of Brown actually gives me great optimism,” Duncan said. “To paraphrase Dr. King, the moral arc of our schools is long but it bends toward justice, and justice means true equity and opportunity for all.”

Really, Arne? To paraphrase Dr. King?  Are teachers going to a ballgame the clear signs you have been looking for that Tennessee schools are bending toward justice?  Or is it the NAEP scores in 2013 that you are still hyping, even though the scores in 2011 in TN went down almost as much as 2013 went up-- so that TN is just above where it was in 2009 in terms of NAEP?

What would Dr. King say about the apartheid charter schools that federal policy incentivizes or outright dictates?  One of the keys to the RTTT kingdom was to remove charter school caps, which Tennessee has done will all the haste required to land their $501 million prize in 2010.  

Now Memphis has over 40 of these segregated hellholes staffed by clueless beginners from TFA or one of TFA's knock-offs, and Nashville has 18.

Here is what Tennessee's real record is in terms of civil rights in schools. From TMoE:

A review of the  2011 [and 2013] Tennessee 4th  grade  NAEP mathematics scores reveals that the performance gap between  Black and White students is not significantly different from  the  gap in 1992. Nor is there a significant  difference in the 2011 and 1996 performance gaps when comparing students who were eligible  for free/reduced lunch  with those  who were not.  The same is true  for the 2011 8th grade  NAEP mathematics scores—no  significant difference in performance gap scores when compared to scores almost 20 years ago (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011 [and 2013], State Snapshot Report). When  comparing performance gaps between  Black and  White, rich  and  poor,  for both  4th and  8th grades  on 2011 [and 2013] NAEP reading scores over 20 years, only the 8th grade  performance gap between  rich and  poor showed a slight narrowing (p. 126).

USA Today recently reported that Tennessee ranks 8th out of all states in terms of the highest segregation levels for black students.  

But wait, there is more from the Civil Rights Project recent research study on resegregation of schools.  Some states are doing better than others.  Between 1980 and 2012,

•   Tennessee's record worsened when it dropped one spot 12th to 13th in the percentage of black students in majority white schools;

•   Tennessee's record worsened when it went from 15th to 9th in the percentage of black students attending 90-100% minority schools;

•   Tennessee's record was unchanged in that it remained in 12th place among states in terms of black student exposure to white students.