A Nuclear Bomb Detonates in Perth Amboy

Holy cow:

Watch Perth Amboy Superintendent Defends Actions, Will Stay in Job on PBS. See more from NJToday.

I don't think I've ever seen a war between a superintendent and a school board like this one. It's incredible.

So far, Caffrey has not been specific about how exactly she was pressured and for what positions. Personally, I see a difference between instructional and non-instructional jobs. If a school board says, "We want you to hire locally for bus drivers," I think that's fine (as long as the bus drivers are qualified). But if it's "I need you to hire my cousin," that's a problem.

And I do think there is a place for a little hometown pride: hiring back students who attended a school to teach there is a tradition that does have benefits. It shouldn't be overdone, and no one should teach who isn't qualified, but I think it has its limited place.

What we want to avoid is this:

In Garfield, the president of the Board of Education has seven relatives working for the schools, including the superintendent. Half of the district’s 30 administrators have a relative working for the district, with many having multiple family members on the payroll. In the school year that just ended, relatives of trustees and administrators earned a combined $2 million in salaries. 

But when does Garfield’s established reputation for operating like a family business cross the line into unethical behavior that violates state statutes? This week, an administrative law judge will weigh in on this question with a case that revolves around allegations of nepotism, political patronage and school board members who pushed administrators to hire certain people. 

And ironically, the case was triggered by a scathing ethics complaint filed by one of the school board president’s own relatives — the superintendent, Nicholas Perrapato, whose wife is a $100-per-day substitute teacher and whose cousin is the medical director at $65,500. Perrapato, who believes some nepotism is not a bad thing, says he was compelled to file his complaint when the behavior became so egregious it was hurting the education of the district’s children.

I have yet to see Caffrey make such a charge against the PABOE. If it's true, she obviously has an obligation to file a complaint. We'll see if she does. But it seems to me that we're past the time to get specific; if Caffrey really believes that students are being affected, she has an obligation to spell out exactly how.

And I think both she and Tom Moran still need to tell us why tenure is so bad when an appeal to an outside party about her own firing is exactly what's kept her in her job - especially now, when she and her board are waging open war.

ADDING:

JANINE CAFFREY: ...so it's just a handful of board members who are trying to block educational progress. 

MIKE SCHNIEDER, NJ TODAY: Why? 

CAFFREY: Well... 

SCHNIEDER: They're not telling you, "We don't want kids to learn, we want the schools to fail," right? 

CAFFREY: Well, they don't say that out loud, no.

Wow.

Student Surveys Have LIMITED Value

The Center For American Progress, liberal bastion of public school bashing, released a report purporting to show that American schools are too easy. Over at Diane Ravitch's blog, Ed Fuller pretty much destroys the methodology and conclusions of the report, and then bemoans the fact that this poor piece of research is sadly all too typical.

It's worth mentioning that Bruce Baker's done plenty of work about CAP and how truly awful some of their work is. But there's one point I would like to add to Fuller's analysis that stands apart from their history of bad analysis:

Why is education research lately so dependent on student surveys?

As all parents and teachers know, kids are... well, they're kids. They don't see the world the way adults do. They don't have finely tuned notions of objective and subjective opinion. They don't have fully developed vocabularies that allow them to express subtle distinctions.

One example: children often substitute the phrase "yell at" for "criticize." I can't tell you how many times I've had an elementary student say to me that such-and-such an adult "yelled at me" for doing something wrong. When I reply with, "Really? Because I've never heard such-and-such an adult ever raise her voice to a student," the student will immediately say, "Oh, no, they didn't really yell. They were just mad."

"Really? They got mad?"

"OK, they didn't get mad, but they told me I wasn't allowed to staple my hair to the bulletin board."

(OK, that never happened. Get my point?)

The CAP survey is relying solely on student responses to surveys to determine if curricula have the appropriate difficulty. May I remind the researchers that the kids surveyed only know of one curriculum: the one they are learning. How can we possibly get any objective sense of the difficultly of school when the students themselves have such a limited base of experience to draw from?

The report also makes a big deal about student responses to whether or not they know what "their teacher talks about." Is there a big difference between "sometimes" and "often" in the mind of a 10-year-old? Isn't it likely one student's "sometimes" is another student's "often"? What are we really assessing here?

If we want to objectively judge the developmental appropriateness of curricula or standards, we should have experts in child development and learning make that judgment. Those experts would have a broad base of understanding in a variety of instructional techniques and pedagogical methods. They would have deep experience in what is and is not appropriate for children to learn at a particular age.

I believe we have a name for these experts: teachers.

CAP isn't the only outfit to rely heavily on student surveys. Michelle Rhee justified her ridiculous notion that test prep doesn't help on the basis of the Gates MET Project's student surveys. Of course, she got the conclusions completely wrong; but even if she didn't, can we really trust student reports alone to judge whether test prep activities are taking place in a classroom?

Student surveys definitely have their place in research. But we wouldn't judge medical treatments solely on patient surveys; why are we willing to radically change education policy largely on the reports of children? I think they deserve better than that.

ADDING: As if on cue:

Among the elements of a good teacher evaluation system, some of the "most surprising" results can come from what students say about their teachers on surveys, said Microsoft founder Bill Gates, speaking at the Education Commission of the States' National Forum on Education Policy in Atlanta today.

Delivering the keynote speech on support for high-quality teachers, Gates said, "Asking the students the right question is very, very diagnostic." He cited surveys as among the three components that can go into a good teacher evaluation system, along with supervisor observations and test scores.

Hey, if it worked for the X-box...

When did the entire world decide this guy knows anything about schools?

Virtually Cheating

Oh, my:

But the design of the test had two potential flaws: first, students were informed in real time whether their answers were right or wrong; second, they could take the test anytime they wanted. Bob and several friends devised a system to exploit these weaknesses. They took the test one at a time, and posted the questions along with the correct answers in a shared Google document as they went. None of them studied, so the first one or two students often bombed the test, but students who took the test later did quite well. 

When we hear such stories of online cheating, the reasons for this behavior seem rather simple: It doesn’t take a criminal mastermind to come up with ways to cheat on a test when there’s no supervision and the entire Internet is at hand. Gone are the quaint days of minutely lettered cheat sheets, formulas written on the underside of baseball cap bills, sweat-smeared key words on students’ palms. Now it’s just a student sitting alone at home, looking up answers online and simply filling them in. [emphasis mine]

The post presents a very compelling theory as to why on-line cheating is so prevalent:

So if it’s not necessarily the fear of getting caught, what might the reasons for increased cheating be? Based on our research, I would propose that the primary reason is the increased psychological distance between the dishonest act and its significance, and between teacher and student. The difference a little distance can make is rather impressive. Take the results from a study of around 10,000 golfers who were asked—among other things—how likely golfers were to cheat by moving the lie of a ball by 4 inches through various means: by nudging it with the golf club; by kicking it; or by picking it up and moving it. What these golfers told us was that 23% of golfers would likely move a ball with their club while only 14% and 10% would move it by kicking it and picking it up, respectively. What this tells us is that the extra distance provided by the club allows for twice as much cheating as the unavoidably conscious and culpable act of picking up the ball and moving it. 

What does this have to do with cheating in online courses? Online classes are by definition taken at a distance, from the comfort of the student’s home where they are removed from the teacher, the other students, and the academic institution. This distance doesn’t merely allow room for people to get away with dishonest behavior; it creates the psychological distance that allows people to further relax their moral standards.  I suspect that it is this aspect of psychological distance, and not simply the ease of pulling it off, that is at the heart of the online cheating problem. [emphasis mine]

As we plunge into the brave new world of virtual charter, we need to keep this in mind. And it's one thing to have college-aged students deal with their own moral ambiguity; it's quite another to allow this to be foisted on to teenagers, or even younger students. Part of our job as teachers is to guide them in their moral development; that's awfully hard to do when we aren't even there.

And don't try to tell me that "The teacher is just a text or a tweet away!" There is no substitute for looking a student in the eye; every teacher and parent has lived that.

But if this push for virtual learning in New Jersey and elsewhere goes through, expect more of this:

We then entered a large room, converted from the school's library, with about one hundred 7^th and 8^th graders seated at tables, most of them staring at computers and doing multiple choice math problems. I watched as one girl, seemingly in a trance, looked at the screen, and hit A, B, C, D keys in turn, until she got the right answer to a multiple choice question and moved onto the next one. Sadly, no adult but me seemed to be paying any attention to this student to make sure she was trying to think the problem through.

There were also two or three small groups of students, sitting at smaller tables, with rather harassed looking teachers who were trying to teach math, but allowed to spend only about ten to 15 minutes together before time ran out and a signal was made for the students to move back to computers, or to another group led by a different teacher. 

Rose explained that in the room, there were four certified teachers, two college students, and three high school students staffing the room, though it was hard to discern this.  He said that each teacher specialized in teaching 25% of math skills, and every student was assigned to particular groups or math problems by means of an algorithm, calculated the night before, based on his or her performance from  the day before.

But what I saw was not personalized instruction and engagement, but many confused and somewhat dazed students, and much disruption, with kids bumping into each other during abrupt scheduling changes, as they moved around the crowded room at the same time. [emphasis mine]

One reason we need to develop critical thinking in students is so they can make smart consumer decisions, and think past the advertising that pervades our culture. Would that the people making our  education policy had that same ability.

Dave, are you looking at Frank's paper?

A Fair Trade?

An addendum to my earlier rambling rant essay about class, segregation, and school "choice":

As if on cue, David Brooks does a good thing by bemoaning the radical differences in the childhoods of rich and poor American children. But then he proposes a trade:

Liberals are going to have to be willing to champion norms that say marriage should come before childrearing and be morally tough about it. Conservatives are going to have to be willing to accept tax increases or benefit cuts so that more can be spent on the earned-income tax credit and other programs that benefit the working class.

First of all, why is "or benefit cuts" in there? Why can't we just make it all about tax increases - especially on the wealthy? Lord knows the one-percenters have got the money:

But aside from that, let me see if I understand the deal here: 

All I have to do as a liberal is yell at poor people to stop having babies out of wedlock, and conservatives will agree to pony up more to help them out? Really? Sounds good - let's try it:

HEY, ALL YOU POOR PEOPLE! KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE NOOKIE! AT LEAST GO GET SOME CONDOMS OR SOMETHING!

OK, I did my part! Now all we have to do is wait for the millionaires to voluntarily give up the enormous tax breaks they bought for themselves and paid for through campaign contributions! Yep, I'll bet that money for poor folks is going to be rolling in any second now...

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. "I don't think the common person is getting it," she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. "Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.

"We've got the message," she added. "But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies -- everybody who's got the right to vote -- they don't understand what's going on. I just think if you're lower income -- one, you're not as educated, two, they don't understand how it works, they don't understand how the systems work, they don't understand the impact."

I'd like to believe that moral hectoring by liberals was enormously powerful. I'd also like to believe I could eat a box of Ho-Hos every day and not gain weight. Sadly, reality often intrudes on my dreams, and those of New York Times pundits...

(h/t Diane Ravitch)

A Virtual Diaster In the Making

After all of the embarrassment the NJDOE has suffered due to their broken charter school application process, you would think they'd be proceeding with extreme caution before introducing another hair-brained scheme.

Not a chance:

As New Jersey awaits a decision on its first online charter schools, the operator of three of those proposed schools isn’t taking any chances.

Officials of K12 Inc., the nation’s largest online education firm, are in Newark this week continuing to wrap up the details for the three schools it would manage, one an entirely online venture from kindergarten through 12th grade and two others that blend online and in-person instructions for high school students. 

The three have each won preliminary approval from the state. Now, they're waiting for a decision this week on the final charters needed to open in the fall.

In the meantime, top K12 executives and staff were traveling to Newark and neighboring cities yesterday to continue to sign up students and get their documents in order.

“We’re visiting families one by one,” said Peter Stewart, K12’s vice-president for school development, who was among those doing the visits. “We’re continuing to get documents from everyone, it’s an ongoing process.”

Maybe they could supplement their revue streams by cross-selling some Amway products as they go door-to-door...

This is insane. We know the performance of these schools is abysmal. We know that K12 is being sued by its own investors. We know that, right across the Delaware, Pennsylvania's virtual charters have been a wreck.

According to SOSNJ, these schools - which have no building infrastructure to maintain and a fraction of the personnel costs - will get 90% of the normal per pupil costs for each child enrolled. The money will come out of the sending districts' budget, with no local oversight whatsoever. That's right: if a home-schooled kid from your district - a kid you're not currently paying for - enrolls in this dubious enterprise, you have to pick up the tab, and your local school board can't even check to see what they're getting for your money.

That is simply crazy.

But you know how we roll in Jersey: no idea where we're going, but full speed ahead!

Meanwhile, the state Board of Education has put off its next discussion of the administration’s proposed charter school regulations, including provisions that would specifically accommodate online charters for the first time.

The board was expecting to take up the regulations at its monthly meeting tomorrow, but apparently the sheer volume of public comment at a hearing last month has forced it to push it ahead to August. The next phase of the deliberations involves accepting the regulations as a final proposal, with another three months before a final vote.

“The department got so many comments, they wanted more time to review them,” said Arcelio Aponte, the board’s president. “It’s not often we get so many on one topic -- literally hundreds -- and I think they wanted to be thorough.”

Let me get this straight: the state BOE wants to take time to review public commentary... but, as they do that, we'll just plow ahead and grant charters to a company that performs terribly and is facing a class action lawsuit.

This needs to be stopped immediately. If there was ever a time for the legislature to act, this is it.

I'm sorry Dave, but I'm afraid you'll have to pay me for my new charter school...

The New Segregation in the New Newark

(Welcome Ravitch readers! Stay a bit, look around, leave a comment - no big whoop...)

This is a very important post; not because it's in response to me, but because it comes from a Newark parent - someone with his child's future on the line:   

Jersey Jazzman: Newark Will NEVER Have Control Of Its Schools

Thoughtful and angry counterpoint on state-appointed superintendent Cami Anderson’soverriding the locally elected school board’s vote against leasing school buildings to charter schools.

[...]

It’s true that there are a lot of mediocre and even ineffective charter schools in Newark. A search on GreatSchools.org, which evaluates schools on a one-to-ten scale based on standardized testing results, shows that there are, indeed, many charters that don’t do better than their public school counterparts. There are also public schools that are great—Ann Street school in the Ironbound has been a Blue-Ribbon winner in years past.

The challenge is to figure out how the effective models are scaled up across the city and the problem schools are either fixed or dissolved quickly. [emphasis mine]

Let's leave aside the closure paradigm for now (you know who deals with this with his typical perspicacity) and focus instead on this notion of "scalability." This is the reason I like this post so much: it cuts right to the heart of the problem in a way that so many reformyists don't understand (or pretend not to):

If we can't replicate the "success" of a "successful" charter school, what good does it do for everyone? Sure, we might "save" the kids who attend the charter... but what if the kids themselves are the independent variable in the equation? In other words: if "successful" charters are "successful" because they weed out the kids who can't be "successful," what good does that do for all of our kids?

This is the central question in the entire debate about charters and vouchers and "choice": are these market-driven reforms changing the practices of schools in a way that makes them better for all children? Or are we simply segregating the children who, because of the circumstances of their lives, can't keep up with children who are already primed to be "successful"?

Over and over again, I've shown how those who make the case that their charter/voucher/magnet school is "beating the odds" are doing nothing of the sort. What they are really doing are creating segregated schools: segregated by socio-econimic status, or learning disability, or parental involvement, or ability to follow a particular discipline code, or even by race.

Now it is true that some charters do seem to "beat the odds": they do better than expected given their student populations. But are the odds any better for charters - as a whole - than public schools? And can those high-flying charters scale their success to all students? Increasingly, the answer seems to be: "No."

In the case of Newark, I'm afraid the evidence is quite clear: "successful" charters are "successful" because they serve different student populations than the public schools surrounding them. TEAM has a different student population. North Star has a different student population. Robert Treat has a different student population. These are the charters we hear about; the ones our politicians and pundits love to brag on:

TEAM and North Star are two of the schools that Cami Anderson proposed Newark make room for after closing down "failing" neighborhood schools.

This is not a knock on those charters, their dedicated staffs, or the deserving children who are their students. It is a look at the facts. And the facts tell us that "successful" charters are often "successful" because they serve students who speak English at home, don't have as many special education needs, and don't live in severe poverty.

What's worse is that the schools that take the most difficult children - the ones we said we wouldn't "leave behind" - turn out to be the objects of derision and scorn. Some of those schools have been targeted for closure when the primary difference between them and "successful" charters is the amount of poverty among their students:

Closure elementary schools are indicated in Red, and charter schools in Green. District average (labeled Total – sorry) is in Black. In short, these are high poverty schools, with two of them – Dayton and Miller St having among the highest concentrations of low income children.

Is anyone prepared to deny that what I'm describing is exactly what is happening in Newark right now?

Which brings us back to our Newark parent:

As a Newark parent, I have skin in the game in this decision, something that most of the Star Ledger Editorial Board and, I suspect, Jersey Jazzman don’t have. My oldest is about to enter kindergarden, and it took us some time to evaluate the options and come to a decision—one I’ll detail in another post.

Newark schools need leadership that will make hard decisions, study successful trends, be willing to experiment, and use resources carefully. In those terms, I think Anderson’s decision trumps that of the board.

There may be something to the idea that prevention of returning control of the schools to Newark would be better for Newark kids.  But using this vote to make that argument is misguided.

Now we're having an adult conversation - good. It's damn well about time. And since we're putting all of our cards on the table, let's be clear about what is happening in Newark and, for that matter, the rest of the state (and, arguably, the nation):

We have a governor who has explicitly said that New Jersey's public schools spend too much money. He mocks Newark for spending what it spends to educate some of the poorest children in the state, despite the fact that there is a massive amount of evidence that New Jersey's commitment to school funding equity has produced real results for these very children.

This governor has mistakenly - deceptively? - insisted that the problems in New Jersey's schools should be laid at the feet of teachers:

Q. And is tenure reform the most important part of that?

A. I see tenure, merit pay and OSA as a bundle. I’d like to see them all go together. By repairing the tenure system, we’ll be able to get rid of some ineffective teachers, but then we’ve got to get effective ones in there and it’s going to be years and years. So that’s why I think OSA is such an important part, and increasing charter schools in urban areas, so that those kids don’t get lost while the fixes of tenure and merit pay are fixing the system in a 10-year horizon.

It doesn't seem to occur to the governor that Millburn, right down the road from Newark and one of the best districts in the state, has tenure and a unionized teaching staff and no vouchers and fought tooth-and-nail against charter schools. Are the teachers really that much better in Millburn? Is that the primary difference between the two school systems?

But rather than acknowledge the most obvious thing in the world, Chris Christie has hired an ACTING Commissioner of Education and a superintendent for Newark who share his vision: the dissolution of public, neighborhood schools in favor of a system of charters. This plan is being implemented with funds provided by Eli Broad, a California billionaire who serves as Cerf's patron and shares his vision. Mark Zuckerberg's grant is abetting their schemes.

I've not said that Zuckerberg or Broad have a personal financial stake in the privatization of Newark's schools; I don't believe they do. They have, however, drawn quite a few edu-preneurs into their worlds, people who stand to make a good buck off of the conversion of Newark's schools. And there are ancillary plans - Teachers Village stands out - that are contingent on Newark adopting a charter-based school system.

But I believe Zuckerberg and Broad's motivation is ultimately ideological. They really do believe that a "market-based" approach to education will magically wipe away the economic decay and lack of opportunity and racism that Newark suffers under every day.

The question, however, is not whether they are correct in their assumptions and prescriptions (it's obvious to me and others that they are not). The real question is: Who gets to make the decisions? Billionaires dumping small pieces of their vast fortunes on a community that they have no ties to? Or the people of that community themselves?

If the Advisory Board in Newark had acquiesced to Anderson's plans, they would, in effect, be endorsing the destruction of a system of neighborhood public schools, run by the citizens of their community. They would be agreeing that Newark's children cannot be educated unless they are segregated; again, not necessarily by race (although that is certainly part of it), but also by ability, or parental involvement, or educational need, or language, or socio-economic status.

They would be agreeing that it is acceptable to have some children enroll in charter schools that receive additional financial support, operate under a different set of rules, do not allow for meaningful parental or community input, and have different student populations.

But what's worse, they would be agreeing to live in the same state of denial as all the other reformyists: people who will not acknowledge the truth that the primary effect of an expansive charter system is to isolate different populations of children from each other.

Now, here's the thing: if we could get past this denial, we could have a serious conversation that's long overdue. Because we have big, big problems with segregated schools in New Jersey - problems only a few people seem to want to talk about.

Millburn is in the same county as Newark, but, for all intents and purposes, it may as well be on Mars. There is little to no interaction between the students or the parents in both communities. The funding systems are completely separate. Parents in Millburn pay a fortune to live there; I'm sure the houses are very nice and they've got that great downtown and a Whole Foods, but what they are really paying for is the school system.

That school system has great teachers and big athletic fields and lots of science labs and great music and art programs... but it is also filled with students whose parents can and do pay a large premium to get them into that district. Millburn is full of families who have segregated themselves by virtue of their means - and that contributes to their children's educational "success" far more than any other factor.

Is this "fair"? Were I a parent in Newark, with real "skin in the game," I wouldn't think so. Why should  my child be denied the chance to enjoy a peer effect of children raised in like-minded families? Peer effect is real and substantial; why should the benefits of it be granted only to those who can afford to move to communities with great school systems?

This is a hard question, and our current political environment has made it dangerous to discuss, for both sides. If reformyists agree that charters and "choice" are not bringing about substantial instructional change, but mostly just segregating children, they are admitting the problems go far deeper than anything that happens in our schools.

If, however, anti-reformyists like me believe that charters and "choice" are merely segregating kids, we have to face an uncomfortable truth: that segregation is already occurring on a large scale throughout the state and the country. We are already educating some of our kids at the expense of others.

New Jersey has attempted to ameliorate this disparity through the Abbott decision and the later SFRA law. Again, we've seen real progress. Is it enough? No. What should we do? I wish I had a perfect answer, but...

I'll tell you what we shouldn't do. We shouldn't strip power from communities to have a say in their schools. We shouldn't go backwards by taking away funding that's made a real difference in the lives of children. We shouldn't pretend that "choice" is often nothing more than segregation. And we shouldn't say, "Poverty is an excuse not to reform!" when the truth is that reform is the excuse we use to not deal with poverty.

Newark has a decision to make: is it going to divide up its kids into groups that are more easily educable and groups that are not? Is the city, in effect, going to track its kids, starting at the earliest grades? That's the real issue, as much as some will vehemently deny it. And it's an issue that should be - that must be - resolved by the people of Newark. Not by billionaires, not by bureaucrats, not by consultants - but by the people of the community.

In the end, all of this is academic for the parent of a child in a Newark school. No one should ever criticize any parent for doing what is ultimately in their child's best interest. If you think Robert Treat or North Star is the best possible choice for your kid, by all means, try to get them in. No child should ever be used to make a political point.

But we owe it to all of the children to be honest about what is going on in Newark and the rest of the country. We shouldn't pretend that this last vote was all about replacing bad schools with "remarkable" ones; it wasn't.

One last thing: you're right, I don't have a child in Newark's schools. But I am a New Jersey public school teacher, and the reformy arguments have real consequences for my work and my students. Every teacher and every parent should be aware of what's going on right now, because, like it or not, it affects us all.

ADDING: Just rereading; yeah, I went on a bit, didn't I? But I still want to add one thing:

I have relied heavily on the research of Dr. Bruce Baker of Rutgers here, as I do in many of my posts. I and many others are very grateful for what he does, but I want to be clear: these conclusions are solely my own. I encourage everyone to go to SchoolFinance101 and read for yourself what Baker has to say about these issues; you may arrive at a different place than I do.

If you do, come here and let's talk. That's how it should be.

Arne Duncan Does Not Get It

Diane Ravitch points us to this conversation with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about using test scores in teacher evaluations. Just watch the first minute or two in the clip to see Duncan, once again, prove he has no idea what he is talking about:

So again, let's sort of look at where we are as a country. For decades, zero percent of a teacher's evaluation was based upon whether their children were learning.

That's hogwash for two reasons. First, principals and supervisors have always used student learning in teacher evaluations. Art teachers are judged by their students' art; math teachers are judged by their student's scores in a variety of standardized and other tests. It's ridiculous and ignorant to assert otherwise simply as a justification for Race To The Top.

Second: using a Value-Added Model or a Student Growth Percentile based on standardized tests is not the only way to judge whether "children were learning." Duncan's blind faith in bubble tests as reliable indicators of student learning is bad enough; he must know that VAMs and SGPs have huge error rates when applied to judging individual teachers. If he doesn't, he is incompetent and needs to be fired immediately.

In fact we had states that had laws on the books, including, I think, New York, that actually prohibited the leaking of student achievement in teacher evaluation. That's makes no sense whatsoevcer. That's one extreme. The other extreme is 100% of a teacher's evaluation is based on a student test score, which also makes absolutely no sense. Go back to what I said before: multiple measures, looking at a set of different things. Student growth and gain, being what we said was a significant part, and whether it's 30 or 20 or 40 or 50. The honest answer is we as a country don't know what the right percentage is there.

Mr. Secretary, I know this is a little tricky, but I think you can get this: it doesn't matter if it's 30 or 20 or 40 or 50, or 90 or even 5. When a rigid, quantifiable, highly variable metric is added to an evaluation, it doesn't matter how much weight it's given: it becomes all of the decision.

I've used other analogies to make this point, but let's try something else. You play basketball, right Mr. Secretary? Well, suppose we choose the winner of the NBA Celebrity All-Star MVP Award based on the following criteria:

• Offense: scale from 1-4, 45% of evaluation
• Defense: scale from 1-4, 45% of evaluation
• Shooting percentage: exact ratio of shots made to shots taken, 10% of evaluation

Now, let's compare your performance to Kevin Hart's. We'll give you a 4 on offense, and a 3 on defense. Kevin gets a 3 on offense and a 4 on defense (it's a hypothetical, sir - relax). But let's say you went 5 for 11 from the field, and Kevin went 1 for 2. By our rubric, Kevin is the better ball player. 

And we could adjust all of these percentages so that shooting counts for as little as 1% or as much as 99%; the way we've set things up, it is always the deciding factor. Arguing about the percentage is pointless: the rigid, quantifiable metric is all of the decision, no matter what percentage of the evaluation it makes up. Because shooting percentage is much more variable than our offense and defense rubric, it carries more importance.

(It's also worth pointing out that shooting percentage can be accurately measured; a teacher's effect in student scores cannot.)

Now, I can imagine that Duncan might argue that he would never condone using such fine distinctions to makes high-stakes decisions. I imagine him saying he just wants to identify the tail ends of the distribution: just the very best and the very worst teachers.

The problem is that any evaluation system that mandates the use of a quantifiable metric to divide teachers into levels of effectiveness - and that is precisely what Race To The Top does (p.11) - will always have cut off points. And these metrics, with their phony precision, will place teachers into those categories with high-stakes consequences.

Everyone needs to get clear on this: when a reformer blathers on about how only part of the evaluation is based on standardized tests, it's a sure sign they haven't done their homework. No one would make this assertion if they had really thought these schemes through to the end. 

Our new Secretary of Education

Does the Star-Ledger Enjoy Embarrassing Itself?

Why does the Star-Ledger continue to embarrass itself by publishing schlock like this?

The Newark school system once served more than twice as many kids as it does today, but it still has almost as many schools. So it’s full of empty space, with more than 8,000 vacant seats at last count. That’s an expensive albatross.

The city is also home to a thriving charter school movement that is bursting at the seams. The best charter organizations, such as North Star and Team Academies, are showing remarkable results and have waiting lists that stretch into the thousands. They want to expand. [emphasis mine]

Oh, my goodness. Is this really so hard to comprehend? Have I really done that poor of a job explaining the most obvious thing in the world?

Folks, North Star is not "remarkable"; it only gets high test scores because it lets loose the students who would bring its scores down:

Here, I take two 8th grade cohorts and trace them backwards. I focus on General Test Takers only, and use the ASK Math assessment data in this case. Quick note about those data – Scores across all schools tend to drop in 7th grade due to cut-score placement (not because kids get dumber in 7th grade and wise up again in 8th). The top section of the table looks at the failure rates and number of test takers for the 6th grade in 2005-06, 7th in 2006-07 and 8th in 2007-08. Over this time period, North Star drops 38% of its general test takers. And, cuts the already low failure rate from nearly 12% to 0%. Greater Newark also drops over 30% of test takers in the cohort, and reaps significant reductions in failures (partially proficient) in the process.

[...] 

My point here is not that these are bad schools, or that they are necessarily engaging in any particular immoral or unethical activity. But rather, that a significant portion of the apparent success of schools like North Star is a) attributable to the demographically different population they serve to begin with and b) attributable to the patterns of student attrition that occur within cohorts over time. [emphasis mine]

And it's the same for TEAM Academy. This isn't analysis by some wild-eyed blogger; this is work from Bruce Baker, one of the foremost authorities on education finance in the country. A man who is an expert regularly quoted in the Star-Ledger's own news pages.

And yet the rest of the editorial mocks those who question Cami Anderson's push for charters. Newark advisory board president Antoinette Baskerville-Richardson "regard(s) the charter movement as an alien invasion" (it is, if we call California billionaires "aliens"). Steve Adubato is "a make-believe school reformer"; Ras Baraka "is reflexively opposed to everything Anderson does."

So Tom Moran, the S-L's op-ed editor, blithely waves aside those who don't share his views; but when I point out the obvious facts about charters to him over and over and over and over again, he refuses to listen. Why? Is this really so hard to understand?

Tom, read the comments below your editorial. Your readers get it. Why don't you?

Or, more precisely: why won't you?

NJ Charters: A Growing Embarrassment

Cross-posted from Blue Jersey


Something is very wrong with charter schools in New Jersey.

This week, the citizens and school boards of Cherry Hill and Voorhees won a major battle against a proposed charter school that neither community wanted nor needed. Blue Jersey has previously detailed the story of Regis Academy's founder, Pastor Amor Khan, an anti-marriage equity crusader and political ally of Chris Christie.

Khan admitted - and his initial application clearly showed - that he needed the charter funds that would come from local taxpayers to pay off the mortgage on the property he was attempting to buy. The property would have housed both the charter and his ministry's other operations, a clear conflict of interest the local school boards and parent activists pointed out repeatedly.

But because charter schools in New Jersey need not be approved by their local school boards, the local sending districts - which eventually grew to include over 30 districts all over South Jersey - had to set aside millions of dollars on the possibility Regis would open its doors this fall.

When the deal for the original property fell through, Khan had to scramble to find a new site - a surprise to the local school boards and residents. At this point, even the NJDOE had to admit that there were too many "misrepresentations" in the Regis application; this week, they denied final approval to the charter. Of course, the budget is set in the sending districts; what happens to the money now is anyone's guess.

Had Regis been the only charter with problems, charter supporters could brush off this unfortunate outcome as an isolated incident. But charters are becoming an embarrassment all over the state:

- This morning, Jessica Calefati reports in the Star-Ledger on a charter school - Adelaide Sanford - that is allegedly paying rent on properties it doesn't use. The issue seems to be similar to the one with Regis: the school and the landlord are one in the same, allowing tax dollars set aside for charters to be used to pay rent on properties being used for other purposes.

- Newark's schools are still under state control, but this week, the elected "advisory board" rejected a plan to allow colocation of charters with public schools. State-appointed superintendent Cami Anderson went ahead with the scheme in contradiction to the board, despite the fact that the charters which will share facilities are either new schools with no record of success, or charters that serve substantially different student populations than the neighboring public schools.

- But even that wasn't enough for the NJDOE. In a remarkable move, the state released its review of practices in the Newark district at the same time Anderson overrode the board's colocation vote. That review shows the district has gone backwards in the time under Anderson's watch, making it less likely the state will relinquish control back to local citizens.

Yes, that's right: the NJDOE says Newark has gone backwards under state control; therefore, the state needs to retain control. Lewis Carroll couldn't have invented logic more absurd.

- In Camden, the state continues to drag its feet on the building of a new school at Lanning Square. Local activists are demanding the local board take action against the state to force the project forward. But South Jersey Democratic boss George Norcross has his eye on the parcel for a new charter school. Plans for the new public school have found their way to the construction firm working on behalf of Norcross; is Lanning Street going to wind up hosting a charter instead of a public school?

- Last month, the blog Schools Matter posted a stunning email, reportedly from an anonymous former NJDOE employee. The post alleges that NJDOE staffers linked to the Broad Superintendents Academy (from which ACTING Commissioner Chris Cerf graduated) are planning to force locally-run charters to give up control to national charter management firms. Paul Robeson Charter in Trenton is being taken over by Scholars Academies, allegedly the first of the local charters to give up its operations.

All of this is taking place in the context of a charter system in New Jersey that, on average, does no better at educating students than the public schools when accounting for student backgrounds. ACTING Commissioner Cerf promised a report on charter performance to justify expanding their reach across the state; that was 489 days ago! Sources tell me the NJDOE is working to hire a conservative think-tank to produce this report.

But we don't need any research to tell us this: the charter system in New Jersey is broken. It is being driven by ideological, rather than educational, concerns. Our students deserve a charter plan that incorporates strict fiscal oversight, a layer of local approval and control, transparency, and demonstrable success in boosting student achievement.

Until this system is repaired, there should be a moratorium on new charters, and the existing charter system should undergo a thorough review from a source outside of the NJDOE. If there was ever a time for the Legislature to step up and investigate New Jersey's charter approval and oversight processes, this is it.

Citizens 1, Charters 0

Regular readers here have been following the story of Regis Academy Charter School, a charter foisted on a high-performing school district that neither wanted nor needed it. When we last left the tale, the charter (scheduled to open its doors this September) was so desperate for students, it was drawing them from an area over 50 miles across.

Then Darcie Cimarusti clued us in that Regis was evicted from its location for failure to secure funds to close on its mortgage. They tried to switch the location without letting the sending districts or the town know about the move.

Well, apparently that was too much, even for the NJDOE (and that's saying something!). Cherry Hill, the sending district, reports the following on their website:

Charter Update…The Superintendent received notification from the Department of Education that the Commissioner has denied final approval for Regis Academy Charter School.  In a joint statement issued on July 6, Dr. Reusche and BOE President Seth Klukoff said:  “The district's objections to this charter application have been well documented and we are glad that the Commissioner has decided not to grant final approval.” They also expressed gratitude to the many community members who supported the district’s efforts to have the preliminary approval overturned. 

In Cherry Hill, as in many suburban school districts, funding for public education comes primarily from local property taxes. Yet, the decision to approve charter school applications rests entirely with the Acting Commissioner of Education.  The NJ Assembly has passed legislation (A1877) that would require local approval before the establishment of new charter schools.  The Senate version of the bill (S2243) is awaiting a hearing in the Senate Education Committee.  We encourage our residents to join us in lobbying the Senate to fix New Jersey’s broken charter school law and bring local control to the charter school approval process.

A small correction: it's ACTING Commissioner Cerf. The announcement has been confirmed by the local press in a story by Melissa DiPento (who has done stellar work on this story):

After a Department of Education readiness walk-though inspection last week, one final step in charter school approval, DOE Assistant Commissioner and Chief Innovation Officer Evo Popoff announced today that Regis Academy Charter School would not be opening its doors this fall. 

The DOE cited Regis in misrepresentations made by the school in the charter application, along with no proof of a suitable facility for its students by the June 29 deadline, among other things. 

All of this was detailed in the July 6 letter sent to Pastor Amir Khan, Cherry Hill Superintendent Maureen Reusche, Voorhees Superintendent Raymond Brosel and other school officials. 

“Misrepresentations and a lack of forthrightness by Regis in the application and during the review process up to and including the preparedness review amply support this conclusion,” Popoff writes. 

[emphasis mine]

OK, let's stop right here. The NJDOE is saying there were "misrepresentations and a lack of forthrightness by Regis in the application"? Really?

Then why was the process allowed to go on this far???


The four original sending districts had to set aside money to fund the potential students who might have enrolled at Regis. Cherry Hill had to set aside over $600,000 to fund 50 potential students, and that was after pleading their case to the NJDOE, which originally wanted them to set aside $1.9 million. Voorhees, Lawnside, and Somerdale all had to do the same. That money came out of the local taxpayers' pockets through property taxes, even though it was clear none of these communities wanted nor needed a charter school - especially one with no track record of success and little that was interesting or innovative in its curriculum.

But now the NJDOE is admitting there were misrepresentations made in the application. Well, why didn't they catch those in the original screening process?


I'll tell you why:

There's the founder of Regis Academy, Amir Khan, sitting right behind Chris Christie at one of his propaganda rallies disguised as a "town hall." Khan and his wife are anti-marriage equity crusaders and big supporters of Christie. How big?

Here's Khan behind Christie at another rally earlier that year. Khan, as a member of the influential Black Ministers Council, enjoyed unique access to the governor and the ACTING Commissioner of Education. Reginald Jackson, leader of the BMC, boasted about his ability to shepherd favored applicants through the process.

But ACTING Commissioner Cerf swore to us all that the application process was quite rigorous:

Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf said the four schools approved would help expand the option for New Jersey students, especially those in failing districts. He said the applications denied were all vetted using "disciplined" critieria.

"The very first bar that a charter applicant must clear is that the school has a high likelihood of providing an excellent education," Cerf said. "We are confident that all of the schools we approve will be successful."

For the first time, the state followed guidelines set by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers in deciding which applications to approve and deny, Cerf said. [emphasis mine]

Well, guess what? The NACSA, the NJDOE, and ACTING Commissioner Cerf all dropped the ball - and the citizens and students of Cherry Hill, Voorhees, Somerdale, and Lawnside are now paying the price. And it's not like they didn't know they weren't being diligent:

There's Carly Bolger, NJDOE's chief of charters at the time, telling a reviewer that financials in the charter applications would be done in-house. Hackuva job, Carly.

This incident proves one thing: the charter school application process in New Jersey is a disaster. Regis Academy - by the NJDOE's own admission - had a faulty application; it never should have gone this far.

But I do take great hope from the way this incident has ended. Because the good people of these communities proved that if we are willing to stand up and challenge the unaccountable bureaucrats who are shoving "reform" down our throats, we can stop the wholesale destruction of our public schools.

Yes, it is infuriating that they had to go through this nonsense, but they persevered, and they won a big victory for their communities. I am immensely proud of the efforts of people like Darcie, the Speak Up South Jersey folks, SOSNJ, and the school boards of these communities.

If they can do it, we all can do it. Get organized, talk to the press, be vigilant, and be completely relentless. We can and we will push this nonsense back.


ADDING: The Philadelphia Inquirer also did some great work on this story. They give some more detail about the NJDOE's decision:

The controversial Regis Academy charter school, which its backers hoped would open next month in Cherry Hill, was denied final approval by the state Department of Education on Friday.

In its charter application and the state's recent "preparedness" review, Regis provided inaccurate information about the status of its proposed facilities in two township locations, according to a letter dated Friday from the department to the Rev. Amir Khan, pastor of the Solid Rock Worship Center and the would-be founder of the secular charter. 

"After a thorough review of the documentation related to this matter, the inescapable conclusion is that Regis has made material misrepresentations throughout the process and has not at times acted in good faith in its interactions with the department," state Assistant Education Commissioner Evo Popoff said in his letter to Khan. 

[...] 

But it was lack of forthrightness by the applicants and uncertainty about whether the school had a definite site that brought the charter denial, according to Popoff's letter.

In its initial application, Regis stated that Solid Rock owned the former Holy Rosary church facility at Burnt Mill and Evesham Roads in Cherry Hill and would lease a portion of it to the charter, according to the state.

But Solid Rock did not own the property, and the Diocese of Camden, which does own it, has sought to evict the church, the letter continued.

That alone should have been enough to deny the application!

In an interview Thursday, Khan said that Solid Rock had halted its fight against its eviction and would move out voluntarily July 17. The diocese filed suit against Solid Rock last year, saying it had not met the terms of a lease-to-buy real estate agreement. 

An education spokesman said Thursday that Regis subsequently informed the department that it planned to locate to the former Living Faith Christian Academy on the Cooper River in Cherry Hill. State officials recently inspected the facility.

Again: why even inspect the facility? You knew they were playing fast and loose with the truth; why allow this to go any further?

As part of its recent preparedness-for-opening review, the state received a lease from the charter-seekers identifying Solid Rock as the landlord of the second location and Regis as the tenant, according to Popoff's letter. 

"Because of the prior misstatement in the Regis application" the department sought verification of ownership, Popoff wrote.

If you were so concerned about the integrity of the application at this point, wouldn't that tell you something? Why allow this to continue?

In an e-mail to the state on Thursday, Calvin Brown - Solid Rock's executive director and vice chair of the Regis board of trustees - wrote that the church was in the process of buying the property.

But, Popoff wrote, the property was still listed for sale on several real estate websites.

Those findings, "when taken along with misstatements in Regis' original application, raise serious concerns regarding Regis' reliability and integrity," he concluded.

I'd say the "reliability and integrity" of the entire charter approval process is in question after this fiasco.