School Vouchers Are Not a Cure For Segregation: Part III, New Orleans

Here are links to all five parts of the series:

Part I

Part II

Part III : New Orleans

Part IV: Milwaukee

PartV: Washington DC and Conclusion

* * *

Those who vouch for school vouchers, like Kevin Chavous, badly want to sell the myth that the "system is color blind and largely benefits minority families."

The problem is that we've now had school voucher programs in various places for a good long while, and the results range from weak to downright ugly:

• None of the independent studies performed of the most lauded and long standing voucher programs extant in the U.S.—Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Cleveland, Ohio; and Washington, D.C.— found any statistical evidence that children who utilized vouchers performed better than children who did not and remained in public schools.

Even though they tried as hard as they could, researchers in Milwaukee could only find, at best, small effect sizes for voucher schools. Same in Washington, DC: no effect in math, and 0.11 SD in reading, equivalent to moving from the 50th to the 54th percentile.

Weak as these results are, however, at least they aren't as bad as what has been happening in New Orleans:

These are not just mediocre schools; many are church schools that offer different varieties of religious instruction subsidized with public funds. Some teach junk science ("creationism") and apparently discriminate against students based on their sexual orientation and religion.

[...]

Last December, the Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Researchissued a report after an extensive examination of the program's results. The conclusions by the report's authors were disturbing, if not surprising. "Attendance at an LSP-eligible private school lowers math scores by 0.4 standard deviations and increases the likelihood of a failing score by 50 percent," the three economists who compiled the report concluded. "Voucher effects for reading, science and social studies are also negative and large."

A February 2016 report by the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans found much the same. And last year, Danielle Dreilinger of NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reported, "One third of Louisiana's voucher students are enrolled at private schools doing such a poor job of educating them that the schools have been barred from taking new voucher students, according to [state] Education Department data." [emphasis mine]

Given this awful track record, it's no wonder supporters of vouchers have been looking for something -- anything -- positive they can say about Louisiana's voucher program. And so this report, from the same folks at the Education Research Alliance, has been held up as evidence that the voucher schools, even if they are educationally lousy, at least have the benefit of helping desegregation.

Unfortunately, when you dig into the report, you find it's got some serious limitations. Transfers out of public schools that "reduce segregation" are defined as: "...when a student of a given race leaves a school that is disproportionally composed of students of his same race relative to the greater CBSA. Conversely, outcomes that increase racial segregation occur when a student leaves a school in which the proportion of his race is less than the proportion of individuals of that race in the greater CBSA." 

See the limitation? A student need only transfer to a school that has a slightly different racial profile for that transfer to be credited with "reducing segregation." In addition, the overall transfers into private schools are increasing, not decreasing, segregation (p. 23).

Again, this is the overall state of Orleans Parish private schools:

The vast majority of Orleans Parish private schools enroll student populations that are less than 20 percent, even though the parish's overall child population is 71.7 percent black.

Note also that there is a substantial number of private school students who attend highly segregated -- greater than 90 percent black -- schools. Yet very few Orleans Parish private school students attend schools that match the overall racial profile of the area.

Let's look at this from the perspective of the proportion of white students in the private schools:

Again: there are very few private schools in Orleans Parish that match the overall racial profile of the area. Most of NOLA's private schools have populations where white students constitute the vast majority of students.

I don't see how anyone could describe this as "color blind."

Now, one problem with using New Orleans as an example of the relationship between vouchers and school segregation is that school vouchers are limited and still relatively new: they've only been in NOLA since 2008, and only expanded across the state in 2012. Given the vast turmoil post-Katrina Louisiana has seen, we'd probably be better off looking at the effects of vouchers on segregation in other regions.

So let's head to Milwaukee next.

Color blind?

School Vouchers Are Not a Cure For Segregation: Part II

Here are links to all five parts of the series:

Part I

Part II

Part III : New Orleans

Part IV: Milwaukee

PartV: Washington DC and Conclusion

* * *

In Part I of this series, I point out that -- contrary to the implications of those who vouch for school vouchers -- America's private schools are highly segregated. Which means that using public monies to pay for private school tuition isn't likely to help desegregate America's already segregated public schools. To the contrary, vouchers will likely make segregation worse.

The analysis I did in Part I parallels a report by Steve Suitts for the Southern Education Foundation that shows America's private schools, particularly in the South, are overwhelmingly white. It's a good report, but somewhat limited, because the frame of reference is an entire state. That's a very wide area that likely contains multiple regions with their own demographic differences. 

If, for example, a state has one region with a large concentration of private schools but few black children, it would hardly be fair to say that those schools were segregating compared to their neighbors. But if we aggregate the data at the state level so we included distant regions with many black students, we might conclude these schools were, in fact, segregating. What can we do?

One solution is to bring our analysis down to a more local level -- but it can't be too local. If it is, we won't see the phenomenon of segregated communities of different races that are still geographically close to each other -- something that happens in America more than many would like to admit.

For our purposes, I suggest counties are a decent choice: larger than towns or small cities, but smaller than states or (in many cases) core-based statistical areas. Let's take a look at a few counties in the South that contain relatively large cities and see what their private school populations look like.

We'll start with the counties containing Atlanta, GA:

Again: the red lines represent the percentage of black children (under 18) in each county. Each "bin" -- the gold bars that run across the horizontal axis -- represents the proportion of private school students in area attending a school that is 0-10% black, 10-20% black, and so on. The highest bar in both counties is 0-10%, meaning the majority of private school students attend a school that has between 0 and 10 percent black students. In sum:

The vast majority of Atlanta area private schools look nothing like the racial profile of the entire area. 

Again, I won't pretend that Atlanta's public schools are desegregated -- they aren't. But the notion that  expanding a system of school vouchers would somehow lead to less segregation flies in the face of this data.

Notice how -- particularly in DeKalb -- there are a significant number of private school students enrolled in schools that are 90 percent or more black. Does it help to desegregate schools if the black students who use vouchers wind up going to schools like these?

I don't mean to imply these are "bad" schools; honestly, I have no idea. In the absence of other evidence, I am happy to assume, as I always do, that these schools are full of hard-working educators doing their best for their students (of course, I can be rather naive about these things...).

But isn't it clear that "choice" advocates like Kevin Chavous are just wrong when they say things like this?

There is no denying history and the motives of some parents and politicians 50 years ago, who feared desegregation and were racially motivated to send their children to private schools. However, the history of 50 years ago doesn’t align with the reality of today. Private school choice programs now exist in 25 states and Washington, D.C. Through vouchers, tax credit scholarships, and Education Savings Account programs, nearly 400,000 children are accessing a private school of their parents' choice. Today’s system is color blind and largely benefits minority families. [emphasis mine]

"Color blind"? Really? Here's the histogram for Duval County in Florida, the greater Jacksonville area:

Again: a significant majority of the private schools have student populations that are less than 10 percent black, even though 36.6 percent of all of Duval's under-18 population is black. Here's Richland County, South Carolina, home of the state capital:

Again: the vast majority of private schools have a black population well below that of the entire region. Mecklenburg County, NC, the Charlotte area:

Wake County, NC, the Raleigh area:

Getting the picture? Southern private schools have far fewer black students proportionally than the regions where they are located.

Let's look at one more area in the South: New Orleans, LA.

Not only do we have many private schools with small proportions of black students; as in DeKalb, GA, there are also a significant number of schools that enroll a black population of more than 90 percent. But very few Orleans Parish* private schools could ever be called integrated.

I saved this one for last because of a report that has made the rounds claiming that school vouchers have helped desegregate NOLA's schools. Hmm... does this look "color blind" to you?

More on that report in the next part -- and we journey to Milwaukee, the mecca of school vouchers, to ask if their long-standing voucher system has actually led to desegregation.

Stand by...

Color blind?

* Yes, I know it's a parish, not a county. I tried to explain that to the computer, but it's stubborn...

StudentsFirstNY: Supporting School Funding Equity, Except When They Don't!

We take a quick break from our look at school vouchers and segregation to present a study in hypocrisy by one of the Northeast's most reformy outfits: StudentsFirstNY. Here, in a "sponsored post" at Politico New York*, SFNY joins NYCAN, the Buffalo Urban League (who are having some troubles of their own), and others to make the case for standardized testing as a necessary tool for achieving educational equity:

Parents of African American and Latino children have always recognized the value of the assessments. That’s why New York’s “Big 5” cities opt in to the tests in such overwhelming numbers, this year included.

I'm not going to say there isn't some truth to the argument that the opt-out movement has many of its roots in the white suburbs... but it's not the whole truth. In New Jersey, according to SOSNJ, black students, who make up 15.3% of all Grade 3 through 11 students, are 17.0% of all students who didn't test -- not a big difference (also see Bruce Baker's post about socio-economic status and opting-out).

But let's set that aside and get to the meat of the sandwich:

However, the campaign driven by a small group urging parents to opt their children out of statewide tests threatens to do great damage to our mission of ensuring an equal education for every child no matter where he or she is growing up. This movement is essentially rejecting all objective measures of educational achievement and, subsequently, lets children, including a disproportionate number of minority children, fall through the cracks. This year’s tests were shorter, sharper, essentially untimed, and only used for diagnostic purposes. They were stronger and less stressful for children. There is always more work to be done to further improve the assessments, but it’s time for opponents to understand the incredible value these exams provide for helping us reach equality in education. [emphasis mine]

Really? The tests are "helping us reach equality in education"? Please, tell us more:

Nearly one hundred years after emancipation, the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown vs. the Board of Education found what communities of color had known for generations: the system of “separate but equal” was not only unconstitutional, but fundamentally unfair. And yet, here in New York, it took until the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s victory just nine years ago to provide equal education funding for New York City and minority students.

That lawsuit relied on standardized test scores to make the case against separate and unequal funding, with the chief litigator arguing, "From our point of view, testing has been very helpful in pinpointing the problem and showing exactly which kids are not making the grade."

First of all, Michael Rebell, who led the CFE lawsuits, did indeed say that tests were helpful in making the case for adequate funding. That makes sense; you need some sort of academic measure if you're going to show that districts need a base level of funding if they are to achieve a certain level of educational achievement. But here's the thing:

New York State continues to have "separate and unequal funding" years after the courts, partially on the basis of test scores, demanded otherwise -- but StudentsFirstNY and NYCAN apparently haven't noticed!

Let's have Bruce Baker tell the tale:

The 2007 foundation aid formula was adopted by the state specifically to achieve compliance with the high court’s order in Campaign for Fiscal Equity. The state argued that this new formula was built on sound empirical analysis of the spending behavior of districts that achieved adequate outcomes on state assessments. The state argued that the foundation formula applied this evidence, coupled with additional evidence-based adjustments to address student needs and regional cost variation, in order to identify a specific target level of per pupil spending for each district statewide, which would provide comparable opportunities to achieve adequate educational outcomes. The state determined the share of that target funding to be raised through local tax revenues and estimated the amount to be paid by the state toward achieving each districts’ sound basic funding target. 

Then, they simply failed to fund it.

It's true. The New York foundation aid formula -- which admittedly has plenty of problems (if you want to get into the weeds, read this by Baker -- it's quite eye-opening) -- is still the law of the land. It is what the state itself says schools need to provide adequate educational opportunity. It was set to be phased in over four years. And yet it has never been fully funded, as the Alliance for Quality Education notes when commenting on this year's budget:

The total aid increase of $1.35 billion is $400 million less than the 2008 record increase of $1.7 billion. The struggle for educational equity is focused on ensuring that high needs schools get enough funding which means Foundation Aid. AQE called for $1.47 billion in Foundation Aid, the Board of Regents called for $1.3 billion and the Assembly’s budget proposal was for $1.1 billion. But the enacted budget included only $627 million in Foundation Aid. To the credit of the Assembly Majority, of the Foundation Aid delivered a higher proportion than usual to high need districts.

Unfortunately the enacted budget included no multi-year phase-in of the full $4.4 billion in Foundation Aid that is owed to schools. The Assembly budget proposed a four-year phase in of full foundation aid, but both the Senate the Governor rejected such a plan. Now we must demand that the remaining $3.9 billion is paid over the next three years. [emphasis mine]

And so it goes in New York State: Angry Andy Cuomo refuses to even consider the idea of raising taxes on the wealthy (he wouldn't even if they begged him -- oh, wait...) while simultaneously denying schools the money the state itself says they need to educate their students.

Now, keep in mind that StudentsFirstNY lauds the "incredible value these exams provide for helping us reach equality in education." Surely, they must be furious with Cuomo for denying the funding the state itself says is needed for the schools that serve New York's neediest children!

Surely, they must have felt betrayed by Cuomo when he, once again, slighted schools in favor of low taxes for the one percenters!

Surely, after explicitly citing the use of test scores in the CFE lawsuits, SFNY must be pounding the table, demanding that Cuomo come through with adequate and equitable funding for the Empire State's schools!

Surely...not:

 

 

 

StudentsFirstNY's Statement on Budget Deal Supporting Parent Choice

POSTED [...] ON APRIL 01, 2016 

"Governor Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Flanagan and Speaker Heastie should be congratulated for reaching a budget agreement that supports parental choice. Public charter schools are doing phenomenal work in the state's most underserved communities and the increased aid and rental assistance will help them continue to deliver for kids," said StudentsFirstNY's Executive Director Jenny Sedlis.

And there it is: so long as there's "choice," screwing over New York's neediest students is just fine with StudentsFirstNY.

I have to wonder: does StudentsFirstNY even know that New York's schools have been chronically underfunded according to the law the state itself passed? Does NYCAN understand that New York, despite spending an overall high amount per student, does a lousy job distributing more of those funds to districts with high needs?

Do they even care?

It's fine to talk about using tests as a tool to bring equity to school funding. Of course, we could have all the data we need for that purpose with far less intrusion and far less cost... but these fine reformy folks aren't ready to hear about that, are they? So I'll save that argument for another day and merely conclude by pointing out this:

It is utterly cynical to complain about opting-out under the guise of caring about school fiscal equity while simultaneously praising a highly inequitable state budget.

I know SFNY is funded by the wealthiest of the wealthy, and will pretty much defend any horrible policy so as long charter schools get a little more scratch. But even I thought there was a limit to their hypocrisy.

Fool me once...

Angry Andy says: "Thanks, StudentFirstNY!

I couldn't screw over NY's neediest schools without you!"

* Why does Politico New York even have "sponsored posts"? I mean, I can understand why newspapers or magazines have "sponsored content," even if it's a little ethically shady: the buyers are paying to have their message distributed. 

But why do that on an internet platform? I mean, anyone can host a website, right? Why not just buy ads on PNY and have them link to your own servers? Why does the content have to be on Politico's server, wrapped in Politico's branding, accompanied by Politico's graphics and links to more Politico content?

Unless the point is to make a reader think the content had gone through Politico's editorial process. But no, that couldn't possibly be the reason...

Could it?

School Vouchers Are Not a Cure For Segregation: Part I

Here are links to all five parts of the series:

Part I

Part II

Part III : New Orleans

Part IV: Milwaukee

PartV: Washington DC and Conclusion

* * *

How white are America's private schools? Really white:

Students in the nation’s private schools are disproportionately — and in some states overwhelmingly — white.

While that’s not entirely surprising, a new analysis from the Southern Education Foundation quantifies the continued segregation of white students in private schools, particularly in the South, where private-school enrollment jumped in the 1950s and 1960s as white families sought to avoid attending integrated public schools.

Should public tax dollars, through the funding of private school vouchers, but used to subsidize such a segregated system? The author of this report doesn't think so:

The author of the analysis also puts forth a provocative argument: Because of this historical pattern, private schools that take public money (via vouchers and voucher-like programs) should not be able to select the students they admit. Instead, those schools should have to admit anyone who applies, just like public schools do, said Steve Suitts, who wrote the study as a senior fellow at the Southern Education Foundation.

“The public-school system is built on the bedrock notion that we want each child to have a chance for a good education,” said Suitts, now an adjunct professor at Emory University. “And if private schools do not wish to advance that national purpose, then they ought not receive public funding.”

Let's make something clear before we continue: the notion that all public schools "admit anyone who applies" is awfully strained when we consider that our country's public, district schools are highly segregated themselves. Schools segregation is largely a result of residential segregation, which is a result of years of both official and unofficial policies.

So no one should point a finger at segregated private schools and simultaneously pretend there aren't public schools that engage in the same de facto practices. But at least we can all agree that segregation in the public and private school sectors is something we need to address. I mean, no one serious would ever claim that expanding private school enrollments would actually help ameliorate school segregation...

Would they?

There is no denying history and the motives of some parents and politicians 50 years ago, who feared desegregation and were racially motivated to send their children to private schools. However, the history of 50 years ago doesn’t align with the reality of today. Private school choice programs now exist in 25 states and Washington, D.C. Through vouchers, tax credit scholarships, and Education Savings Account programs, nearly 400,000 children are accessing a private school of their parents' choice. Today’s system is color blind and largely benefits minority families. [emphasis mine]

That is Pitbull's good buddy Kevin Chavous -- always reliably reformy, and always ready to champion market-style "choice" in education. Of course, Chavous is coming to us via The 74, an outlet that never met a charter school expansion or school voucher system it couldn't love.

How does Chavous rebut Suitt's claim that private schools are largely segregated -- that the system is, instead, "color blind"? After lauding voucher programs in Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana, Chavous (as all reformy types apparently must) states outright that Suitt just doesn't care about children as much as folks who support vouchers:

These are just three examples of where Suitts gets it wrong. These are also three examples of programs designed to help low-income families – most of whom are minority. This isn’t an anomaly, this is the reality of the opportunity provided to minority students through private school choice. If Suitts had his way, poor black families would be left in Birmingham, AL to attend underperforming schools in a school district that’s 95 percent African American and reports a graduation rate 20 percent lower than the statewide average. The same would be the case in Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, but private school choice offers these families hope and the children an opportunity to attend a quality private school that would have otherwise been out of reach.

Like so many of the writers who appear in The 74 (and, for that matter, Education Post), Chavous has the uncanny ability to fling indignation towards a guy who is pointing out the facts while simultaneously ignoring the main thrust of his argument. Suitt is saying private schools, particularly in the South, are highly segregated, and supporting them with taxpayer dollars is against the interests of society if we want to move toward desegregation.

No one would argue with Chavous that it is acceptable to continue to cluster African American children in segregated, underperforming (and under-resourced) schools. The question is whether, given what we know currently about American's private schools, expanding a system of "choice" through vouchers would lead to more segregation or less.

Let's dig through the data and see if we can shed some light on this.

One reason Chavous doesn't dispute any of the data in Suitt's report is that it's quite straightforward: basic descriptive statistics about average racial compositions of schools from the NCES Private School Survey. You really can't argue with Suitt's facts -- but I do think they are well worth reexamining.

Rather than replicate Suitt's work, let me show it in a different light. We'll start with Alabama as an example (click on any graph to expand).

This histogram divides the total number of students enrolled in Alabama's private schools into ten "bins" that run across the horizontal axis. The first bin, which is the first gold column all the way to the left, represents schools where between 0 and 10 percent of the students are black. Two-thirds of all Alabama private schools students attend a school where less than 10 percent of the students are black.

I've added a red line to this and all of the graphs that follow: it represents the proportion of the total state population of children (under age 18) of the race represented by the graph (data from the American Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates (2010-2014) of the US Census Bureau). In other words, 30 percent of the children in Alabama are black. Notice how few students are found at the line? If Alabama's private schools were representative of the state as a whole, we'd see the most students enrolled in schools that were 30 percent black; instead, we see very few students are in such schools.

Here's how the same histogram looks for Alabama's white* students:

59 percent of Alabama's children are white, yet only a tiny fraction of the state's private schools students attend schools with a percentage of white students anywhere close to this average. Notice also that there are a number of private schools that enroll a very small proportion of white students (less than 10 percent). Which begs a question: what if all the black students using Chavous's vaunted vouchers are going to private schools just as segregated as the public schools they are leaving?

I've posted histograms for the other states Chavous mentions below. But let me stop here and point out that this analysis still may not be adequate for our discussion. A state is a large geographic area, full of many different regions with their own demographic characteristics and patterns. Averaging these descriptives across an entire state might give us a distorted view of the segregative trends that may or may not take place within a specific region.

We'll get to that in Part II. Until then, the other statewide histograms are below. Note the trend: very few southern private schools have student populations that mirror their state's overall racial profiles.

More to come; stand by...

Florida: 21.2 % black, 44.4% white.**

Georgia: 34% black, 46.2% white.**

Louisiana: 37.6% black, 52.1% white.**

North Carolina: 23.6% black, 54.2% white.**

South Carolina: 31.5% black, 55.1% white.**

* Throughout this series, "white" when referring to US Census data means white, non-Hispanic. NCES data reports race differently than the US Census; these are the most comparable measures. 

** Again: all percentages from the US Census American Community Survey 5-year Estimates (2010-2014), children under 18 years in households.

A Few More PARCC Thoughts

Since my last post about the PARCC appears to be getting passed around a bit, let me add a few more quick thoughts before moving on:

- One notion I see coming from some school leaders these days is that PARCC is a "better" test because it breaks down skills and abilities into subgroups, and that can help districts and schools make good curricular and instructional decisions.

In general, I really don't have a problem with this idea... provided these school leaders approach the data correctly. How should a school or district administrator view PARCC scores? As a limited source of data, subject to noise and validity problems as much, if not more, than any other assessment.

According to the PARCC folks themselves, the Math tests have about 30 to 40 items each. Break that down into a set of several different skills, and you're talking about a scant few questions for each individual area of content. Which is fine! I'm not saying the PARCC should be much longer so that it can be comprehensive -- that would be absurd.

I'm just saying that you have to look at the limitations of the test before you act on it. Maybe your Grade 7 students didn't do so well on calculating the areas of circles on the PARCC. Fine -- look into it. But don't think the PARCC, by itself, comes close to giving you actionable information. The one or two items that asked your kids to calculate these areas probably don't give you enough data.

As a general rule: any school leader who thinks the PARCC is anything more a supplementary source of data has not been properly trained. And any state education official who continues to claim the PARCC is critical for developing good curricular practices is way overselling the test.

- I don't understand why the PARCC people haven't made the commitment to open up their exam every year and release every item on every test. I mean, that's the advantage of having a collation of states, right? If there's just one test but it's distributed across multiple states, we should be able, at a reasonable cost, to make these exams fully transparent. So why don't we?

How can anyone claim the PARCC can improve instruction if the educators who are supposed to scrutinize the results can't even see the questions? Isn't that a minimal requirement of an assessment that is supposed to provide information on individual students? That you can see the question and the answer for each kid right next to each other? Sure, it would cost more, because items could no longer be reused. But the losses would be offset by having more kids take the same test every year.

I know some of you are going to hate me for saying this, but: it makes sense to band states together to have one common assessment just so that assessment can be fully transparent. Why don't the PARCC folks agree with me?

Oh, right...

- There are many reasons people opt their kids out of standardized tests. Some are undoubtedly making a conservative political statement -- but I haven't met any of them. The parents I've spoken with generally have one of three concerns:

1) The tests are not appropriate, in their view, for their child. They will tell you their son or daughter is particularly anxious about testing, or has a disability that makes testing onerous, or any number of other reasons.

I have very little patience these days with the folks who are bad-mouthing parents who opt-out, snidely tut-tutting that these parents are "coddling" their kids. I don't know how you can possibly say you're for "choice" and then deny parents any say in addressing something that they believe is harming their children.

Of course, if you pulled back the high stakes linked to these tests, many of the fears of children and parents would likely recede. So what's more important to you folks advocating hard for the PARCC: having the data, or retaining the right to use it incorrectly and punitively?

2) Other parents -- and these are largely the parents of older students -- think the tests are little more than distractions from assessments that really matter: SATs, ACTs, APs, IBs, school finals, and so on. Their kids are burned out on tests to begin with; why should they take the Grade 11 PARCC English test when they are going to sit through a couple of administrations of the SAT?

The idea that these kids should be forced to sit through the PARCC because otherwise we won't be able to make judgements about so-called "achievement gaps" strains credulity. So you've now proved with yet another battery of tests that schools are engines of social replication -- OK, now what? You couldn't tell this before from SAT and ACT scores, and AP scores, and AP and SAT and ACT participation rates, and graduation rates, and the old Grade 10 proficiency tests, and all the Grade 3 through 8 tests the kids took before they got to high school? You needed more data to prove the system is inequitable? Really?

End-of-course high school testing was rammed through New Jersey with practically no debate whatsoever, and this state is hardly alone. Where is any evidence standardized, statewide EOC tests lead to superior outcomes? I haven't seen it. Until the reformsters come up with that evidence, it's more than reasonable for parents, feeling that their high schoolers have enough worries, to pull them out of the PARCC.

3) Most of the parents I speak with have this final concern: something is wrong with American education, it is exemplified by testing, and opting-out is an act to bring about some needed changes to our schools.

In the leafy 'burbs, the concern is that too many kids are burning out on their Race To Nowhere, and that the joy of learning is being stripped away.

In the urban centers, parents of color are seeing that decades of testing have led to more inequity in our schools, with the weak promises of "choice" replacing a meaningful commitment to equity of opportunity.

Standardized testing is the status quo, and the status quo is not acceptable anymore.

Again, I do think there is a place for standardized testing. But we've been giving these tests for years and, arguably, educational inequity is now worse. Where's the payoff? Why continue to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result?

- If the purpose of these tests is to point out that educational inequity needs to be addressed, why are we using them for so many other purposes? As the National Research Council says:

Often a single assessment is used for multiple purposes; in general, however, the more purposes a single assessment aims to serve, the more each purpose will be compromised. For instance, many state tests are used for both individual and program assessment purposes. This is not necessarily a problem, as long as assessment designers and users recognize the compromises and trade-offs such use entails. [emphasis mine]

In other words: it's fine to use these tests as supplemental sources of data. But the notion that they can simultaneously serve multiple purposes and serve them well is just not reasonable. If the point of PARCC is system accountability -- a worthy objective, in my view -- then let's use it for that, and not pretend it's adequate by itself for student assessment and curricular evaluation. At best, it yields some data that might or might not be useful -- that's it.

Speaking of which...

- Anyone who tells you that teachers and their unions object to PARCC because they object to accountability is being foolish and, worse, insulting. I, for one, am fed up with no-nothings who never spent a day in front of a class implying that I don't care about improving my practice simply because I'm pointing out the limitations of these tests are far greater than their promoters care to admit.

I also mightily resent the implication that I am some sort of patsy who's allowed my union to blind me to the awesomeness of standardized testing. As I said before: the purpose of these tests is system accountability. But if we're going to use them for things like student assessment or teacher evaluation or school-level interventions, the very least we should do is acknowledge that they are not up to the task of providing data that compels particular actions.

No teacher worth his or her salt is against being evaluated properly. But the use of these tests, tied to noisy VAMs and SGPs that compel actions based on arbitrary cut scores, is completely without merit. Argue if you want, but don't accuse me of shirking my responsibilities for simply pointing out what groups like the American Statistical Association have already said.

Further, we teachers have seen the corrupting influence testing has had on our schools. I know some reformy folks, including state education leaders, want to silence teacher voices over this (more on this story later). But the fact is that many educators are genuinely concerned about the pernicious effects of over-testing. Dismissing their concerns by impugning their motives is as nasty and lazy as it gets.

That's all for now about testing; let's talk about vouchers next.

The PARCC Silly Season

Miss me?

There's a lot to get to that I've had to miss over the past couple of weeks, and I'll get to it all in due time. But it looks like we're still in the middle of the standardized test silly season, where all sorts of wild claims about the PARCC and other exams are made by folks who have consistently demonstrated that they really know very little about what these tests are and what their scores tell us.

So let's go over it one more time:

- All standardized tests, by design, yield normal, "bell curve" distributions of scores.

I will be the first to say that tests can vary significantly in their quality, reliability, and validity. But they all crank out bell curve score distributions. When New York switched to its "new" tests in 2014, the score distributions looked pretty much the same as the distributions back in 2009.

Same with New Jersey -- just ask Bruce Baker. This is by design - the tests are scored so that a few kids get low scores, a few kids get high scores, and most get somewhere in the middle.

Do I need to point out the obvious? When a test's scores are normalized, someone has got to be "below average." The notion that everyone can be high achieving makes no sense when achievement is judged in relative terms.

- Proficiency rates can be set any place those in power choose to set them.

You will hear reformy types say that proficient rates tanked because the PARCC is a more "rigorous" test than what came before. We could actually have a debate that -- if we were allowed to see the test. What isn't under debate, however, is that the proficiency rates are simply cut scores than can be set wherever those who have the power choose to set them. The NJASK and the PARCC yielded the same distribution of scores:

There was a bit of a ceiling effect on the old NJASK is some grades, but largely the distributions of the two tests are the same. All that changed was the cut score -- a score that could have been set anywhere.

The change in the test didn't cause the cut score to change; that was a completely different decision.

- The new proficiency rates are largely based on the scores of tests that are similarly normalized.

The PARCC proficiency rates were set using other tests, like the ACT and SAT, that also yield normal distributions of test scores.

The purpose of the SAT and the ACT is to order and rank students so college admissions offices can make decisions -- not to determine whether students meet some sort of objective standard of minimally acceptable education.

Colleges want to be able to judge the relative likelihood of different students achieving success in  their institutions. The SAT cut score of 1550 -- often reported as the "college and career ready standard" -- roughly represents a cut score where there's about a fifty-fifty chance of a student getting a B or higher in a freshman course at a selected sample of four-year colleges or universities (most of which have competitive admissions; some, like Northwestern and Vanderbilt, are extremely competitive).

Note that about one in three Americans holds a bachelors degree. I am still waiting for my friends on the reformy side to reveal their plans to triple the number of four-year college seats in America. I'm also waiting to hear how much more they'll pay their own gardeners and dishwashers and home health care aides and garbage haulers when they all earn bachelor's degrees.

Oh, I forgot: these people don't rely on non-college educated workers. They clean their own offices and pick their own lettuce and bus their own dishes at their favorite restaurants...

Don't they?

- The idea that "proficiency" for all current students should be the cut score level attained by the top one-third of yesterday's students flies in the face of all reason.

Seriously: does anyone really think all students should achieve at an academic level that would track them toward getting a B in math or English at a competitive admission, four-year university? How does that make any sense?

But let's supposed by some miracle it actually happened -- then what? Again, are we going to admit everyone into a four year college? Who's going to fund that?

Some folks say that I am consigning certain students to a life of low standards by pointing all this out. But I didn't make the system; I'm just describing it. When you turn human learning into bell curves, this is what you get: somebody's got to be on the left side. There's a serious conversation to be had about how these tests convert class and race advantage into "merit," but even if we removed all of the biases in these tests, somebody would still have to be getting less than average scores.

If you can't even acknowledge this, I can't even talk to you. And, speaking of class and race...

The best predictor of a school's test scores is how many of its students are in economic disadvantage.

How many times must I show some variation of this?

Nothing predicts a test score as well as relative student economic status measures -- nothing. No one serious debates this anymore.

So why aren't we doing anything about poverty if we want to equalize educational opportunity?

- Standardized tests could yield the same information about school effectiveness with far less cost and intrusion.

All of the above said, I still believe there is a place for strong academic standards and standardized tests. The truth is that this country does have a history of accepting unequal educational opportunity, and it's hard to make a case for, say, adequate and equitable school funding without some sort of metric that shows how students compare in academic achievement.

And I don't even have a problem with test scores, properly controlled for student characteristics, as markers for exploring whether certain schools could improve compared to others. Compulsory actions on test scores are idiotic, but using the data to inform decisions? Fine.

But why must we test every child in every grade for an accountability measure? If we're trying to determine if a school has "failed," we could do so with far less cost, far less intrusion, and far less Campbell's Law-type corruption. If the point is to show inequities in the system, we could do that with a lot less testing than we're currently doing.

- Testing supporters should be more concerned with what happens after a test raises a red flag.

Once we identify the schools in question that are lagging, what's our response? No Child Left Behind said: "Choice! Private tutoring! Shut 'em down!"

Turns out that is some seriously weak-ass tea. "Choice" hasn't come close to creating the large societal changes its adherents promise. "Turnarounds" aren't working out well either.

If we really cared about equalizing educational opportunities for all children, we'd start doing some stuff that actually seems to work, like:

• Lowering class sizes.
• Elevating the teaching profession.
• Spending more in our schools, especially the ones serving many children in disadvantage.
• Dismantling institutional segregation.
• Improving the lives of children and their families outside of school.

Of course, this would mean shifting some of the massive wealth accumulated by the wealthiest people in this country towards to the people who actually do most of the work. Given the historic inequality this county faces, I think the rich folks who support outlets like The 74 and Education Post could handle keeping a little less for themselves.

Don't you?

As we come out of the PARCC silly season, it behooves us to ask: If these tests are so damn important for showing that America's schools are unequal, why don't we actually do some meaningful stuff to help them after we get the scores back? Why do we waste our time with reformy nonsense that doesn't work?

Like vouchers. Stand by...

ADDING:

Again, once you find the "failing" schools, the real question becomes: what are you going to do?

From 2004 to 2015, Karen DeJarnette was the director of planning, research, and evaluation in the Little Rock school district, where she was in charge of monitoring black student achievement. In her inspections, she found that some schools, predominantly in the poorer (and minority) parts of town, were plagued with mold and asbestos, had water that dripped through the ceiling, and, sometimes, lacked functioning toilets. Most of the subpar schools were in the east and south parts of town, where test scores were lower, which is no coincidence, she told me. “There was a direct correlation with under or poorly-resourced schools and poor results of students on standardized tests,” she said. 

DeJarnette pointed out the disparities in the reports she compiled for the district, but her comments weren’t acknowledged, she said. Instead, according to her, the board and administrators would talk about how badly some schools were performing, without talking about how under-resourced those schools were. [emphasis mine]

You don't cure a fever by yelling at the woman holding the thermometer.

You Know What Doesn't Help Chicago's Students? Tut-Tutting At the CTU

It looks like Peter Cunningham has decided to take the $12 million in initial grants he got from America's reformiest billionaires and use it to fight back against what everyone who's anyone knows is the greatest threat to American education:

Teachers unions! (shudder)

Education Post, the golden, honeycombed beehive from which Cunningham dispatches his reformy swarm, is buzzing with righteous indignation at the Chicago Teachers Union for daring engage in a one-day strike whose purpose was to call attention to, among many injustices, the massive underfunding suffered by the city's schools.

Reading the Education Post pieces on the strike (the things I do for you people...), a common theme emerges: yes, we know the Chicago schools and students are suffering, but gee willikers, this strike is just the wrong way to solve the problem!

Andrew Broy: "Whatever one may think of this action, one thing is certainly clear: This “strike” does nothing to solve the real problems faced by a district staggering under the weight of fiscal pressures and a seemingly interminable state budget standoff. At a time when all interested parties should be united in fixing a student funding formula that penalizes low-wealth school districts, the CTU prefers to wage war against city leadership in a display of faux progressivism."

Frissia Sanchez: "I actually agree with the union that our state and city have massively underfunded education and it’s time to right that wrong. But I am very disappointed in CTU leadership and how they are handling teachers who oppose the so-called Day of Action."

Maureen Kelleher: "Even though I’m a charter school parent, I find myself agreeing with a lot of what the CTU has to say about the problems with education funding and how to solve them. They’re right that Illinois needs a progressive income tax to raise the revenue needed for essential public services, including schools. They’re right that toxic debt swaps enrich bankers and deprive our children of educational resources. They’re right that Chicago needs tax increment financing (TIF) reform. But a one-day strike is more likely to annoy CTU’s most precious allies—parents—than to pressure targets like the mayor and the governor into changing their policies."

And, of course, the big boss himself: "The union’s website talks about the governor, the mayor and “the 1 percent,” “threats” to cut pensions, more funding for public education, higher wages for private sector workers, support services in schools and communities, higher taxes, smaller classes, a promise of no budget cuts, restrictions on charter schools and an elected school board. It’s unclear how the walkout makes any of these outcomes more likely."

Got that? Everyone admits CTU is making a valid point -- the only problem is that they're doing something about it!

Jersey Jazzman (artist's conception)

To be fair, Education Post is only saying what so many other teachers union bashers in the press have said: they admit that there is a serious underfunding problem for the Chicago Public Schools while simultaneously wagging their fingers at CTU for daring to do something to draw attention to the situation. Here, for example, is the Chicago Tribune editorial board,* admitting CPS is in a fiscal tailspin but still chiding the union for going on strike: 

This bond deal expands and extends the debt load of a school district that's already hopelessly overextended. Or rather, the debt load of Chicago taxpayers who are on the hook for all this principal and interest: CPS expects to pay $538 million in debt service this year on the total of $6.2 billion it owed before this bond sale. This school year, that debt service will divert about $1,370 for every student to the district's lenders. 

This crisis won't be solved by a teachers strike. It won't be solved by declarations of "war" between labor and management. It won't be solved by counting on windfalls from taxes that don't currently exist.

Yeah, and it won't be solved by union-bashing editorials either, will it?

The Trib, of course, lives in a fantasy world where teachers don't need to eat or feed their own kids, so all of CPS's fiscal problems can be solved by educators giving back more and more while Illinois' wealthy enjoy extraordinarily regressive state and local tax rates.

What is undeniable -- so much so that even the Education Post crew knows it -- is that Chicago has suffered from a systemic, chronic underfunding of its schools. Charter school proliferation hasn't helped, but even putting that aside, Chicago's schools, more than any other large city in the nation except Philadelphia, are the victims of inadequate resources. 

Everyone who is willing to look honestly at this knows it's true -- so here are my questions for Cunningham and the swarm:

1) At least twice, Eva Moskowitz, the queen bee of New York's charter sector, has closed her schools and sent her students up to Albany to rally for, among other things, funding for her charter network. Where, may I ask, was your indignation then? It seems to me you actually encouraged pulling those kids out of school to protest on behalf of their school leaders' agenda. Why weren't charter parents supposed to be "annoyed" at their kids missing school if CPS parents were allegedly "annoyed" by CTU's action?

2) What have you people done to get Chicago's public schools the additional money most of you admit they need?

I won't claim to have read everything Education Post has written about Chicago's schools. But when I see posts that lament the costs of teacher pensions (even while admitting CPS teachers are not at all in the wrong) or chide Governor Rauner and the CTU equally without even mentioning the possibility of a tax hike on the wealthy, I have to wonder what the agenda is here.

The only other thing I could find at the site that comes close to suggesting schools need more funding comes from a guest post by Nick Albares from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. I've referred to the report Albares cites many times myself, but even his post doesn't dare suggest an obvious fix: raise taxes on the wealthy and use the funds to invest more in schools.

If Peter Cunningham's crew has pushed repeatedly and strongly for increasing revenue via taxation on the upper-class so that schools can get more funds, I missed it. Swarm (I know you're reading), please correct me if I'm wrong. Until then...

It is more than a little grating to see an outlet funded by the super-rich tut-tutting at Chicago's middle class teachers for daring to take a one-day action to point out the chronic underfunding of Chicago's schools -- especially when their own calls to increase funding for CPS are so weak.

Look, Peter, I know the big boys who are financing your shop don't like it when us plebes point out they are taking almost all of the economic gains of the last couple of decades for themselves. I also know you have an ideological predilection for beating up on unions. I'm not so naive as to think I or anyone else can ever change that...

But maybe it's time to start getting your priorities straight. Who really needs a shaming here: CPS's teachers and the union that represents them, or the people who have all the money but won't give it up for our schools?

Don't listen to him! Keep blaming the teachers unions!

* I always thought the Star-Ledger's editorial board was the worst in America when it comes to education.  But after having scanned the Trib for a bit, I have to admit I was wrong. My sympathies, Chicago.