Are We Allowed to Be Neither Naive Nor Cynical?

July 31, 2013

balance
(Guest post by Greg Forster)

I have a question. Am I permitted to be neither naïve nor cynical about the Tony Bennett emails? Or is there some sort of law that dictates I must be one or the other? Indiana StateImpact places me with the Bennett supporters while Matt seems to think I’m attacking Bennett (I’m not sure how else to interpret “haters gonna hate”). I don’t intend to be either.

I find it difficult to buy the new house line, and I will continue to find it difficult until someone asks Bennett the obvious question: “If this was a glitch in the system, as we are now being told, why did you seek to change the grade only for this one school?” Rick Hess didn’t ask him that question. Matt seems uninterested in asking it, and seems to think I’m a “hater” for asking it. Until that question is answered, I don’t see why I’m a “hater” for pointing out uncomfortable realities.

Is it really so scandalous, does it really make me a “hater,” to acknowledge the obvious fact that politicians are responsive to their donors? When government sets educational standards and has to do what Bennett himself calls a “face validity” test, it is going to know which schools are run by major donors and it is going to be sensitive to that fact. Good grief, are we this naïve?

What we have now is not “the rest of the story” but a failure to seek the rest of the story. Or am I somehow missing something?

On the other hand, Ze’ev and others seem to think I’m saying all standards are arbitrary and there’s no such thing as a rational public consensus. I’m not; I’m just trying to be realistic about what I called “the sausage-making nature of the process” when those standards are being cooked up behind closed doors by a government bureaucracy and its political allies, as opposed to standards that emerge organically from the give and take of a thriving marketplace of options. Technology standards emerge in the context of a system dominated by consumer choice. Educational standards should emerge in the same way.

7 Comments | journalism, National Standards, scandal | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

The Rest of the Story on Indiana Grading

July 31, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Rick Hess interviews Tony Bennett about the grading flap.  Odd that a few critically important details were left out of the AP story. Perhaps the reporter would like to come by and explain why 13 schools who lacked 11th and 12th grade students should have received zeroes for graduation rates and Advanced Placement work.

What if Tony had let those zeroes stand? Do you think for a moment that some of these same critics would have failed to howl at injustice of it all?

Me neither.

19 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Tony Bennett Is Having a Bad Week

July 29, 2013

locke-and-walt-LostBG

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

What’s the best way to top off a really Walt-on-Lost level bad week for Common Core? How about a scandal in which emails show one of its most prominent supporters having manipulated his state’s “high standards” system to ensure that a particular school (one founded by a major donor) scored high? Just as that same state becomes the latest to move toward dropping out of a CC testing consortium?

I’d like to take Andy’s bafflement about CC supporters not anticipating pushback on the costs of implementation and double it in this case, if not triple it: why on earth did they discuss this so transparently in their government email accounts, which made it inevitable that the whole ugly show would eventually come out?

I feel sympathetic to Tony Bennett here. Any kind of evaluation system must involve qualitative as well as quantitative testing. That is, you not only have to make sure the numbers are accurately collected, crunched and reported, you have to make sure that what the system is calling “good” really is good. Of course you could in theory test your system by comparing it to the results of other systems, but if that’s all you do, the whole thing is circular. Ultimately you have no choice but to pick some examples of cases that you presuppose to be very good or very bad (or in the middle, for that matter) based on some kind of opinion – maybe yours, maybe your organization’s, maybe a consensus of experts, maybe a popular majority – and see if your system ranked those cases in accordance with the presupposed opinion. It is logically impossible to remove this element of judgment. You just can’t fully test a system for evaluating schools without at some point picking out some super-schools and asking “did these score well?”

Of course, everything hinges on what basis you use for selecting those cases – in other words, whose opinion of which cases are “good” you presuppose, and why. In the real world, if the standards are being set by government, that is always going to be a political process in which one or another set of powerful constituencies are privileged. The Bennett emails reveal the sausage-making nature of the process. What I want to emphasize is that this is not because Bennett is in some way specially corrupt but that this is what any such process must always look like. It is, again, logically impossible to avoid this type of qualitative reality check, and it would be naïve in the extreme to think that any set of political actors would carry out that reality check in any way other than something like what the Bennett emails reveal.

The lesson here is not “Bennett is corrupt” but “all educational standards privilege someone’s opinion of what is a good school, and government privileges the opinion of powerful interests.”

12 Comments | National Standards, scandal | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Pass the Popcorn: Much Ado About Nothing

July 29, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

So in April I wondered whether 2013 would offer up anything to challenge a random collection of old movie favorites I had recently seen on the big screen. It wasn’t looking good, but the Prescott Film Festival just scored, even if it was kind of cheating with a 2012 film.

The Prescott Film festival had what they advertised as the only Arizona screening of Josh Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing this weekend (Phoenix is not just a physical desert) so I eagerly bought a ticket.  Actress Emma Bates, who played Ursula, was on hand for Q and A after the film.  Here’s the trailer:

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So the back story on the film is that Whedon has had actors over to his house on Sundays for years to read Shakespeare. He had a short break between shooting and post-production for The Avengers and instead of going on a trip to celebrate his 20th wedding anniversary, Whedon’s wife talked him in to shooting Much Ado About Nothing.  Whedon summoned his friends, including veterans from Buffy, Angel, Firefly and the Avengers, assigned parts, and shot the entire film at his own house in 12 days.  Bates related that Whedon’s wife is an architect and that she had in fact designed their house with shooting Much Ado About Nothing in mind. When you see the flick, you won’t doubt it.

I generally have a bias against American film actors trying to pull off Shakespeare. I watched the old Julius Caesar recently, and while Heston made a pretty good Marc Anthony, enduring Jason Robards playing Brutus with a midwestern deadpan accent was, well, brutal. I don’t think there was a single Brit in the bunch for this Much Ado but it didn’t matter because these guys were rolling with it and having fun. Sean Maher in particular was very good:

But maybe it was because the last American actor I saw play his role was:

Whether you love Whedon or Shakespeare, this movie is well worth the watch.

5 Comments | Pass the Popcorn | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Al Winner George P. Mitchell Passes Away

July 29, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

George P. Mitchell, the Texas wildcatter who revolutionized global energy and (among other things) winner of the last Al Copeland Humanitarian Award, has died at age 94. Rest in Peace big guy- you done good.

1 Comment | Al Copeland Humanitarian Award | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

What I learned in P.E. class

July 26, 2013

(Guest post by Jonathan Butcher)

A few months ago, I grabbed my tennis shoes and went to my son’s last P.E. class of the year, which happened to be a “parent participation” day. This P.E. class is a program for homeschool students, so children of all ages and backgrounds were there to have relay races and play dodge ball.

I had the chance to run around that day with Jordan Visser, a young man I met about a year ago when his mom, Kathy, signed him up for one of Arizona’s education savings accounts. Regular readers of this blog will recognize his name and story from this post.

Jordan is a quiet kid, but he’s got a big smile and plays as hard as any of the other boys. From the video available on the link above, you will learn that Jordan has mild cerebral palsy and has a hard time with is balance—or at least, he did at one time. Since he’s been using the savings account, he’s seen specialists and used therapeutic horseback riding lessons to help his motor coordination, paid for with the education savings account. The account has also helped Jordan’s parents find individual tutors to help with subjects like math and reading.

Now, having run alongside him in a relay where we grabbed a sponge out of a bucket, squeezed it into a cup, then handed it off to the next person, let me be the first to say Jordan’s quality of life has dramatically improved. If you didn’t know Jordan’s story and were watching the PE class from the sidelines, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between Jordan and the other kids who were soaking wet and laughing.

Vouchers and tax credits have helped children like Jordan, along with students in failing schools and from low-income households, all over the country for more than 20 years. Education savings accounts use a student’s funds from the state formula to give families the same great educational choices as vouchers and scholarships—and more. The flexibility that parents have to meet their child’s unique needs with an account is unprecedented. Parents can buy online classes, pay private school tuition, buy textbooks, and save for college, to name just a few possible uses.

Lindsey Burke and I wrote a special report that was released today explaining the benefits of the accounts’ flexibility. We also propose ways in which vouchers and scholarships can be enhanced by education savings accounts:

  • Creating public school education savings accounts. Parents could use a public school education savings account for traditional school classes, public charter school offerings, public virtual schools such as the Florida Virtual School, community colleges, or state universities.
  • Shifting existing school voucher or scholarship tax credit funds to an education savings account. States with existing voucher programs or scholarship tax credit programs should allow parents to deposit voucher or scholarship funds into an education savings account in order to gain more flexibility with their child’s funds.
  • Expanding the approved expenses covered by a voucher or private school scholarship. This would include expanding the uses of a school voucher or scholarship, transitioning the program into an education savings account.

Jordan’s education savings account changed his life, and it didn’t take an increase in funding, school turnaround plan, or district consolidation. Let’s keep school choice out front and give all parents the flexibility to help their children, whatever their needs are.

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Posted by matthewladner

Common Core Is Having a Bad Week

July 26, 2013

locke-and-walt-LostBG

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

When Locke first meets Walt, he says something about Walt getting back to his mother soon, and Walt tells him that his mother died two weeks ago. Locke looks around at the deserted island where they’ve all just crash-landed and says, “you’re having a bad month.”

Common Core is having a bad week. Pop some popcorn and enjoy watching the excruciating downfall of civilization with your host, Andy Smarick. Line for the ages: Smarick links back to an old post of his where he predicted this would happen and then says, “I can’t help but wonder: If some dude blogging from a coffee shop could see this coming, why in the world didn’t Common Core’s and common assessments’ powerful, well-staffed, and deep-pocketed backers get ahead of this?” He should check out the latest medical literature on PLDD.

In the meantime, the argument that Common Core is bad for school choice seems to be getting some traction, to judge by the increased level of desperate insistence (unconnected to logic or evidence) that Common Core is really great for school choice. Hope you’ve got more popcorn, because master magician Jason Bedrick is here to cut those arguments in two. Unfortunately for CC supporters, he hasn’t learned the part of the trick where they go back together.

You still have more popcorn, and you’re tired of knock-down, drag-out knife fights for the fate of the world on the edges of slowly crumbling cliffs? Don’t worry – we have the lightsabers you’re looking for.

14 Comments | National Standards | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

What Is Public Education

July 26, 2013

(Guest Post by James Shuls)

What does it mean to support public education? To some, it means supporting the traditional system of education, whereby students are assigned to a local school based on where they live. In my new essay, Redefining Public Education, I discuss why this notion is completely and utterly wrong. Public education is not a system; it is the idea that all students should have access to a quality education at public expense.

Check out the full essay below:

http://

View this document on Scribd

 

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Posted by matthewladner

Greg Runs Up More Style Points in 2013

July 25, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

This one slipped past me but not the eagle-eyes at School Reform News– Missouri joins the school choice fraternity with a tax credit for special needs children. If I have the count correct the record for 2013 now looks like:

Alabama new tax credit programs

Arizona ESA expansion

Indiana voucher program expansion

Indiana tax credit program expansion

Iowa tax credit expansion

Missouri special needs tax credit program

North Carolina statewide low/middle-income voucher

North Carolina special needs voucher

Ohio new statewide low-income voucher

South Carolina new tax credit program

Utah special needs voucher program funding increase and formula funding

Wisconsin voucher program expansion

That looks like three new states: Alabama, Missouri and South Carolina along with some important program improvements/new programs and big goings on in North Carolina. Although there could be spirited debate about the best year for school choice before 2011, the top three years ever are clearly 2011, 2012 and 2013 (not necessarily in that order).

UPDATE: J. Bedrick notes in the comments that the Missouri tax credit language did not ultimately pass, but a similarily named piece did pass in a way confusing to both the newspapers and thus me. Sadly, an anti-BOOOOM.

7 Comments | tax-credit scholarships, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

North Carolina Lawmakers Chose Wisely to Pass School Choice

July 25, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

North Carolina legislators have passed measures to provide school choice options to low and some middle-income students and another measure for all special needs children. Data from the Census Bureau indicates that these were wise decisions and should in fact be followed by more improvements.

CensusThe Census Bureau projections show that the school age population of North Carolina is set to expand substantially over the next couple of decades, with an increase of over 800,000 people aged 18 or less by 2030. For a little perspective, this is a school aged population greater than the total K-12 enrollment of Alabama and a bit below that of Colorado. How and where will they be educated?

Mind you that the largest private school choice program in the nation, the Step Up for Students Tax Credit in Florida, will educate around 60,000 students this fall. Along with the McKay program for children with disabilities, private K-12 choice in Florida is poised to pass the 100,000 student threshold in a few years after a decade and a half of admirable and concerted effort.

North Carolina however has 800,000 new students on the way.  If these laws are going to help to make a dent in that figure, a concerted effort to refine and improve the laws will be needed. Formula funding would allow the programs to grow naturally along with the demand of parents and the supply of private schooling. Funding per pupil amounts must be generous enough to spur the supply of new private space.  Quite frankly few choice bills have been designed well enough to pull this off, North Carolina lawmakers should make certain that their laws will spur new private school supply.

If North Carolina choice advocates can achieve all of these things, they will set up an incremental process of expanding private school supply which is similar to the increase in charter school space in states with well designed laws. A state in North Carolina’s growth situation could easily accommodate a robust increase in charter and private schools and would still need to invest hundreds of millions of dollars annually in new district schools to accommodate student population growth.

North Carolina could also accommodate a greater number of students through their choice programs by broadening the use of their programs through an Education Savings Account model. This would allow parents to choose between a variety of education service providers including private schools, online programs, MOOCS, certified private tutors, community college and university courses to build a customized learning experience. By allowing parents to save some funds for future higher education expenses, it might be the only way to preserve a public funding mechanism for North Carolina colleges and universities in the face of nationwide pressures to decrease state funding.

State lawmakers can’t charge tuition to prisoners to keep the jails open, but undergraduates on the other hand…

North Carolina budgets, like all states, will continue to face severe strains from health care spending as we continue to fumble our policies and our population ages. A crush of new K-12 students will simply add to the burden, and the way we are approaching K-12 is serving far too many students very poorly at levels of spending which will prove unsustainable. We need to figure out ways to educate students better and more efficiently. A decentralized process allowing parents and students to figure out how to make best use of scarce funds represents the best way forward.

North Carolina lawmakers chose wisely in passing among the broadest school choice measures in the country.  Sincere congratulations are in order-North Carolina is now ahead of the pack. The hardest work however lies ahead.

1 Comment | vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

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