Nationalization Weasels

May 10, 2011

If advocates of the nationalization of education had greater intellectual integrity, they would openly declare that they favor nationally uniform standards, curriculum, and assessments, and that producing greater uniformity was desirable.  But “intellectual” and “integrity” are not the first things that come to mind when thinking of the U.S. Department of Education–Gates–AFT–Fordham coalition pushing nationalization.

Instead of a straightforward and open defense of their agenda, I anticipate that the U.S. Department of Education–Gates–AFT–Fordham coalition (along with their two hired assessment consortia and corporate backers) will respond with weasel words.  We’ve already seen some hints of their response, so my predictions will not be as impressive as those in the Fordham Report Drinking Game, but feel free to drink nevertheless.

They’ll say that they are not actually advocating a national curriculum.  Instead, they will say that they are only developing  “curricular roadmaps,” “multiple curriculum resources,” “instructional materials,” “content frameworks,” “model instructional units, “content modules” or similar such weasel words.  Their talking points clearly instruct them to 1) use curriculum as an adjective instead of a noun since “curricular [whatever]” sounds like less than “curriculum,” 2) emphasize the plural so it sounds less uniform, 3) substitute a synonym for curriculum, such as “framework” or “model” so that you avoid clearly stating what you are developing.  Credulous reporters may sometimes buy the claim that these weasel words represent important distinctions, but I suspect that members of Congress are less likely to be as easily fooled when Department of Ed officials are called for hearings to explain the legislative authority by which they are developing a national curriculum.  And I suspect those hearings are not too far in the future.

The nationalization folks may also hide behind the fact that there are two consortia, so clearly they do not desire a single national set of curriculum and assessments.  Having a choice among two federally funded products is a bit like the old joke where you have a choice between death and roo roo.  If you haven’t heard it, you might guess or check this out, but I think you’ll agree that this is hardly a choice.

Or perhaps the U.S. Department of Education–Gates–AFT–Fordham coalition will respond that the consortia are primarily devoted to developing new assessments, not curriculum (or curricular [whatever]).  Just remember that assessment can drive everything else.  Once you have high stakes national assessments you have a de facto national curriculum.

And I am certain that we will hear that the entire enterprise is voluntary.  Of course, there is nothing voluntary about mandating that states and localities comply if they wish to receive Title I funds when ESEA is re-authorized.  If U.S. Department of Education–Gates–AFT–Fordham pledge to do nothing in the ESEA re-authorization or future Race to the Top to reward, incentivize, encourage or otherwise coerce states and localities to adopt the national curriculum and assessments that are being developed, then this claim might have some credibility.  But they haven’t declared this as their position and they won’t do so precisely because they are not seeking a voluntary arrangement.  We have already seen fiscal coercion from the previous round of Race to the Top to get states to adopt the Common Core national standards.  Expect more of this.  And saying that states and localities can choose to forgo federal funds if they don’t wish to comply sounds about as voluntary as saying that paying your income tax is completely voluntary because you can always refuse and choose to go to jail.  Taking money from people and only offering them a share back if they comply is coercion.

The nationalizing coalition uses weasel words because their entire project depends on stealth.  If we have an open and vigorous debate about whether it is desirable for our large, diverse country to have a uniform national set of standards, curriculum, and assessments, I am confident that they would lose.  Time and time again the American people through their political and educational leaders have rejected nationalization of education when it has been proposed in a straightforward way.  Having learned from those failures  the U.S. Department of Education–Gates–AFT–Fordham coalition is trying to advance nationalization with piece-meal steps disguised in weasel words.  With the new Manifesto against nationalization I think we have brought the debate out into the open and the U.S. Department of Education–Gates–AFT–Fordham‘s agenda cannot survive in the open.

(edited for typos)

1 Comment | National Standards | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Check Out Our All-Star Lineup!

May 9, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

We couldn’t land Troy McClure, but the manifesto we released today opposing nationalization of K-12 education, Closing the Door on Innovation, did land a lot of big stars – Abby and Stephan Thernstrom, Shelby Steele and Richard Epstein among them. Big names in the education world include Blouke Carus, John Chubb, and Herb Walberg – on top of our very own Bill Evers, Jay Greene, and Sandra Stotsky, of course.

Moments ago, we added our first new batch of additional signers, bringing the total to 144. Among the new signers: Princeton’s Robert George.

In his coverage of the manifesto, titled Now It Gets Interesting, Rick Hess runs down some of the rest of the original lineup:

Signatories include legislators who chair or vice-chair of education committees in Minnesota, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas; state board members from Colorado and Alabama; two former general counsels at the U.S. Department of Ed; and a grab-bag of Republicans like former California governor Pete Wilson, former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, former U.S. House member Pete Hoekstra, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, and Spellings Commission chair Charles Miller. They also include William Estrada of the Home School Legal Defense Association; Bob Enlow, president of the Foundation for Educational Choice; the heads of a number of state-level conservative think tanks; and academics including Shelby Steele, U. Chicago’s Richard Epstein, Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom, and, intriguingly, progressive icon Joel Spring.

Shout out to Bob Enlow for being big enough to make the marquee!

1 Comment | instructional reform, politics | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Closing the Door on Innovation

May 9, 2011

Today a Manifesto was released opposing the effort by the U.S. Department of Education-Gates-AFT–Fordham to develop a set of national curriculum and assessments based on the already promulgated Common Core national standards.  Centralization of education is bad for everyone except the central planners.

The Manifesto is being announced with 118 original signatories who come from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives.  The list includes former Attorney General Edwin Meese, education professor Joel Spring, law professor Richard Epsein, U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Abigail Thernstrom, and many more.  To see the Manifesto and a full list of those who have endorsed it, click here.  Now that the document is public more names will be added as people add their signatures.

Greg has already penned a short essay on the manifesto, which you can read here.

UPDATE : Catherine Gewertz at Education Week also has this piece.

And here is the text of the press release:

For Immediate Release (May 9, 2011)
For further information, please get in touch with:
Bill Evers, bill@k12innovation.com, (650) 380-1546
Jay Greene, jay@k12innovation.com 
 
Broad Coalition Opposes National Curriculum Initiative by U.S. Dept. of Education
Over 100 leaders sign manifesto against nationalization of schooling
 
Stanford, Calif. & Fayetteville, Ark. – A broad coalition of over 100 educational and other leaders representing diverse viewpoints released a manifesto today opposing ongoing federal government efforts to create a national curriculum and testing system.
 
The manifesto, entitled “Closing the Door on Innovation,” is available at www.k12innovation.com. It argues that current U.S. Department of Education efforts to nationalize curriculum will stifle innovation and freeze into place an unacceptable status quo; end local and state control of schooling; lack a legitimate legal basis; and impose a one-size-fits-all model on America’s students.
 
Congress is now preparing to debate renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main law authorizing federal aid to K-12 education. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education has been quietly funding efforts by two assessment groups to develop a national K-12 curriculum, along with a national testing system that tests every public-school student multiple times each year. This federal initiative will create a national system of academic-content standards, tests, and curriculum. It is in line with the goals of a manifesto released on March 7, 2011, by the Albert Shanker Institute that calls for a single nationalized curriculum in every K-12 subject.
 
“A one-size-fits-all national curriculum based on mediocre high-school standards will stifle the educational innovation essential to closing the racial gap in academic achievement,” said Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom in a joint statement on why they signed the new manifesto. Abigail Thernstrom is vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a former member of the Massachusetts Board of Education; Stephan Thernstrom is a professor of history at Harvard University.
 
“Closing the Door promotes what is for high schools the most important innovation in a century,” said signatory Blouke Carus, leading children’s magazine publisher, math and reading textbook developer, and chairman of the Carus Corporation. “Our schools need to offer each student a choice among six or more challenging and rigorous high school curricula, as do other, higher-performing countries.”
 
“The federal government’s effort to impose a national curriculum on all schools spells trouble for the educational system,” said Richard Epstein, law professor at New York University, also a signatory. “No one in Washington can craft a curriculum that works well throughout this diverse nation. Once errors are built in at the national level, corrections will be ever more difficult to make at the local level. Only decentralized control over education can prove nimble enough to root out errors and spur innovation. Washington bureaucrats should not trumpet their own omniscience, but should become more cognizant of their own fallibility.”
 
“To some, a national curriculum sounds like a redemptive cure-all for the shame of our public schools’ failures,” said signatory Shelby Steele of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “And a national curriculum gives the education establishment elite a powerful warrant for ‘doing good.’ But we must not discard the proven constitutional discipline of our federalist system. Decentralization has been the engine of educational innovation. We shouldn’t trade our federalist birthright for a national-curriculum mess of pottage.”
 
“National curriculum becomes, in effect, a nationalization of what teachers teach,” said former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, another signatory. “We must always evaluate policy proposals in light of principles like rule of law and the logic of our constitutional system. The Education Department’s sponsoring and funding of national curriculum runs counter to both laws of Congress and the wisdom of the Founders.”
 
The coalition of leaders releasing its counter-manifesto today opposes both the Shanker Institute Manifesto and the U.S. Department of Education initiative on a variety of grounds:
 
  • These efforts are against federal law and undermine the constitutional balance between national and state authority.
  • The evidence doesn’t show a need for national curriculum or a national test for all students.
  • U.S. Department of Education is basing its initiative on inadequate content standards.
  • There is no research-based consensus on what is the best curricular approach to each subject.
  • There is not even consensus on whether a single “best curricular approach” for all students exists.
 
With federal education law coming to the top of Congress’s agenda, the U.S. Department of Education’s push to create national curriculum and assessment is becoming a hot topic.
 
The manifesto opposing a national curriculum was organized by Bill Evers, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution; Greg Forster, senior fellow at the Foundation for Education Choice; Jay Greene and Sandra Stotsky, professors at the University of Arkansas; and Ze’ev Wurman, executive at a Silicon Valley start-up.
 
(Here and in the list of founding signers, all affiliations are given for identification only.)

5 Comments | instructional reform | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

OMG, Fordham on Vouchers Has Me ROTFLOL

May 6, 2011

Twitter must be infecting the brains of Washington and NY education policy “analysts.”  I say this because I can’t figure out what else could explain the short and inexplicable missives emanating from Fordham these days.  For example, The Education Gadfly declares with Twitter-length analysis: “While Gadfly supports the expansion of school choice to families in higher income brackets, he can’t help but wonder if the Year of the Funding Cliff is the right time for this idea to come of age.”  That’s it.  No other explanation, justification, or analysis is provided.

Uhm, don’t the folks at Fordham know that the voucher and tax-credit-funded scholarship plans being adopted during the current legislative session save states money?  They have generally set the voucher or scholarship amount less than per pupil spending in traditional public schools precisely so that states would save money given the Funding Cliff that states are facing.  That is an important part of the appeal of these programs to some state policymakers.

Another example of a Fordham analysis with all of the depth of a “Tweet” can be seen in  Michael Petrilli’s email response to Don Boudreaux’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.  Boudreaux critiques public education monopolies by asking: “What if groceries were paid for by taxes, and you were assigned a store based on where you live?.”  He continues the analogy to how we provide public education by answering: “Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality.”

Mike’s complete and penetrating analysis in his email response to this piece is: “Clearly Don Boudreaux hasn’t visited a Safeway or a Giant in an inner-city neighborhood, or else he wouldn’t have gone with this analogy. ”

It’s short enough for Twitter, but does it make any sense?  Yes, urban grocery stores tend to be less nice, but there is no doubt that they are better than if they were operated as local government monopolies.  There is ample evidence that markets help deliver better services at lower cost even for the very poor.

Why would someone as smart and nice as Mike make this stupid, one-line retort?  Why does Fordham’s Gadfly dismiss expanded vouchers with the mistaken and one-line claim that they cost more money and so would not be affordable with tight state budgets?

I fear that the brains of the people at Fordham have been shrunk by over-use of Twitter.  Everything is a one-line quip.  No need for facts, evidence, analysis, etc… Everything is a catty little fight.

Diane Ravitch is now tweeting about 60 times per day, but Mike Petrilli is not far behind at about 30-40 per day.  And their tweets are some of the dumbest, ill-conceived things I’ve ever seen from such intelligent people.  Seeing how Tweeting is rotting their brains makes me worried about whether I should give up blogging before I become similarly shallow.

4 Comments | tax-credit scholarships, vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Randi Weingarten Endorses Florida K-12 Jebolution

May 6, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Keep reading the story past all the complaints about cuts…

While praising Orange educators, Weingarten, a former New York City teachers-union leader, was sharply critical of the Florida Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott, whom she accused of taking “a wrecking ball” to the academic progress Florida has made.

Though not all teachers agreed with all facets of the state’s reform efforts in the past decade — pushed initially by former Gov. Jeb Bush — most embraced the effort to improve public education, she said.

And across the country, Florida gained notice for improved test scores, better national rankings and winning a share of the federal Race to the Top grant last year.

“There was a real sense of Florida schools moving in the right direction,” she said.

Ok- so let me catch my breath here.

The story seems to be Florida used to be making progress, but now that the housing bubble crash is forcing spending cuts and Florida law is no longer going to treat teachers as interchangeable widgets, it is all going to fall to pieces.

Riiiiiiiiight

“Not all teacher agreed with all facets” is a true statement. It would also be true to say that “teacher union leaders opposed almost all facets” of the reforms and that the NAEP has revealed their opposition to have been utterly and totally indefensible.

Sorry Randi- as Jay has noted, teacher union leaders have approximately the same level of credibility on education reform as tobacco executives have on cancer research. If you didn’t dislike the latest reforms, there would be something wrong with them.

Leave a Comment » | school funding, teacher union | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww . . . FREAK OUT!

May 5, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Adam Schaeffer is freaking out over the Indiana Triple Play. It’s the largest school choice program ever enacted, and thus the biggest threat to the government school monopoly ever to achieve fruition – but apparently Indiana also has a handful of silly regulations that private schools will have to follow if they want to participate.

For example, participating schools will have to own a copy of the “Chief Seattle letter” from a 1972 movie.

♪♫♪ Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww . . . FREAK OUT!  ♪♫♪

And they’ll have to take the state test.

♪♫♪ Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww . . . FREAK OUT!  ♪♫♪

And they’ll have to provide “good citizenship instruction.”

♪♫♪ Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww . . . FREAK OUT!  ♪♫♪

All this may be a very effective way for Cato to frighten its hardcore libertarian base for purposes of product differentiation in the market of ideas, but it’s not sound analysis.

  1. Most private schools in Indiana already give the state test. This is partly because it’s required for accreditation, but even many non-accredited schools give it. (By the way, the percentage of private schools in Indiana that are accredited is 50% according to the Indiana Non-Public Education Association, not 40% as Adam claims.) Since not all schools will participate in the new program, and the schools that don’t give the state test are overwhelmingly going to be more likely to be the ones who don’t participate, the new law represents no important change from the status quo. Obviously it would be better if the state’s accreditation requirements were changed, but that’s just not the same issue.
  2. Schools don’t have to participate. If they don’t like these rules, they’re as free as they were before. Now they also have the option to participate if they want to.
  3. Where’s the beef? Adam describes the “good citizenship” curricular requirement as “extensive and detailed,” but doesn’t produce much to support that. From what I can make out in his post, it looks like a lot of not much.
  4. The state already has virtually unlimited authority to regulate private school curricula, especially in the name of “good citizenship.” The Supreme Court has given states more or less a blank check to control private school curricula, and the state has especially strong authority to require, and control the content of, “citizenship” education. The existence of a voucher program changes little in this regard.

Concerns that regulations on school choice programs not be allowed to become onerous are perfectly legitimate. But to call the enactment of a voucher program for 600,000 students a “defeat” is going way too far. This isn’t just making the perfect the enemy of the good, it’s making the perfect a nuclear bomb that destroys everything.

16 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Indiana Triple Play Delivers the Win

May 5, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that’s seven.

Gov. Daniels has just signed into law three – count them – three school choice “enactments” according to the terms of my notorious bet with the Washington Post‘s Jay Mathews.

  1. A new voucher program – bigger than any existing school choice program
  2. A new tax deduction for education expenses (including private schooling)
  3. An expansion of Indiana’s existing tax-credit scholarship program

Add that to the list of previous enactments this year…

  1. Utah’s Carson Smith voucher expansion
  2. Douglas County, Co. new voucher program
  3. Arizona new ESA program
  4. DC voucher expansion

…and that smells like a really fancy dinner at one of Milwaukee’s finest restaurants.

In the comments here, “allen” suggests that whether or not there’s an “end zone” in the war or terror, we should definitely seek to “run up the score.” I heartily agree – and I’m not above running up the score on Mathews, either.

A little bird tells me these states are still in play for enactments this year:

  1. Oklahoma
  2. Florida
  3. Georgia
  4. Wisconsin
  5. Ohio
  6. Pennsylvania
  7. Texas
  8. New Jersey
  9. North Carolina
  10. Iowa

I’ll take Texas with a grain of salt – sorry, Matt, but we’ve been promised a program in Texas too many times over too many years for me not to be skeptical. But hey, as you put it, 2011 is already setting a new standard for education reform. Why not Texas, too?

Fact: Chuck Norris can enact a Texas voucher in every state.

Kong & Mario image HT The Pitch

17 Comments | tax-credit scholarships, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Digital Learning Utah

May 4, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Lawmakers have been passing so many major reform bills in so many states that it can make your head spin. Tenure reform, collective bargaining reform, private choice expansion. Indiana, Oklahoma and Florida have all undertaken multiple major reforms, and a few more Big-10 states seem poised to join them. Sessions are far from over, but it is already clear that 2011 will set a new standard for K-12 reform.

One of the new laws already in the books very much worthy of note is Utah SB 65- The Statewide Online Education Program. The authors of this law drew upon the Digital Learning Now’s Ten Elements of Quality Online Learning to develop a very broad online learning policy. The law funds success rather than just seat time, has no participation caps and allows multiple public and private providers. The program starts for public high school students in grades 9-12 but then phases in home-school and private school students for eligibility. You can read the legislation here.

Last week at the Heritage Resource Bank, I was on a panel with William Mattox from Florida’s James Madison Institute. Mattox gave a fascinating talk about blended learning from the perspective of a parent. Mattox related that he and his wife have been home-schooling, but that their son had been taking a couple of online courses as well. His son decided to join the baseball team of his district school (Florida allows such participation, and it netted their flagship school a Heisman Trophy and national championship).

When his son joined the baseball team, he learned that there were other players on the team doing the same thing. Far from being unusual, this customized learning approach was old hat. It was a very compelling talk, and exactly where Utah is heading. This is the first important step towards Tom Vander Ark’s bracing prediction:

Weʼre headed for radical choice–not just school choice but choice to the lesson level. Weʼll soon have adaptive content libraries and smart recommendation engines that string together a unique ʻplaylistʼ for every student every day. These smart platforms will consider learning level, interests, and best learning modality (i.e.,motivational profile and learning style to optimize understanding and persistence).

Smart learning platforms will be used by some students that learn at home, by some students that connect through hybrid schools with a day or two onsite, and by most students through blended schools that mix online learning with onsite support systems. Choice between physical schools will increasingly be about the learning community they create in terms of the applications and extracurricular opportunities and guidance and support systems. Families will gain the ability to construct a series of learning experiences that fit family needs, schedules, preferences, and interests.

6 Comments | online learning | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Governor Mitch Daniels Lays Out His Education Vision at AEI

May 4, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Governor Daniels lays out his education reforms at an American Enterprise Institute. If Indiana can sustain these reforms with prolonged high-quality implementation, they can become the new Florida. Indiana 2011 stands as the best reform session since Florida 1999 in my book.

3 Comments | school accountability, teacher quality, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

There Is No End Zone

May 4, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

I hate to be a pest, but the war’s not over.

In this joyful moment when some people selfishly focus on trying to pull together as Americans and be glad the good guys won for once, thank goodness there’s Jimmy Carter to remind us of just how badly the world still sucks.

He chooses a moment when this kind of thing is going on to announce in today’s Washington Post:

Suspicions of Hamas stem from its charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight. It’s just a matter of some words on a piece of paper.

Headline from Monday’s Guardian, one of the squishiest publications in the western world:

 Hamas Praises Osama bin Laden as Holy Warrior

Coming together as Americans doesn’t get easier when some Americans cling tenaciously to delusions so persistently destructive that they defy merely psychological explanations.

To paraphrase Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer: “Even the Guardian gets it. Why doesn’t Jimmy Carter?”

Or to paraphrase Jason Robards in Parenthood: “Defending America against its enemies is like Jimmy Carter’s ego. It never, never ends. It goes on forever – and it’s just as frightening. There is no end zone. You never cross the goal line, spike the ball and do your touchdown dance.”

You never get to live in a world where people aren’t trying to kill you. And apparently you also never get to live in an America where some Americans aren’t doing their best to drive us apart from each other by embracing our enemies.

HT

1 Comment | politics | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

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