New York Test Scores: Reformies Go All In

The "reform" movement is going all in with yesterday's test score releases in New York State:

Large numbers of New York students failed reading and math exams last school year, education officials reported on Wednesday, unsettling parents, principals and teachers, and posing new challenges to a national effort to toughen academic standards. 

Across the city, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the state exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department. 

The exams were some of the first in the nation to be aligned with a more rigorous set of standards known as Common Core, which emphasize deep analysis and creative problem-solving. 

City and state officials spent months trying to steel the public for the grim figures, saying that a decline in scores was inevitable and that it would take several years before students performed at high levels. Under the old exams last year, the city fared better: 47 percent of students passed in English, and 60 percent passed in math. 

Statewide, 31 percent of students passed the exams in reading and math. Last year, 55 percent passed in reading, and 65 percent in math.

Carol Burris has written what I believe is the definitive analysis of what all this means. Read the entire thing, but let me focus particularly on this:

What is equally disconcerting is that these reforms are being pursued with little or no evidentiary grounding. There is, for instance, zero sound research that demonstrates that if you raise a student’s score into the new proficiency range, the chances of the student successfully completing college increases. New York’s new cut scores are an attempt to benchmark state scores to the proficiency rates attached to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or, NAEP. Yet the connections between NAEP scores and college performance are so spurious that researchers have yet to claim that NAEP scores have any predictive value at all when it comes to college and career readiness.  In addition,  the NAEP proficient level is very high, not at grade level at all.  In fact, most analysts consider the NAEP Basic level to be at grade level.  You can read about the problems with using NAEP as a benchmark here. [emphasis mine]

I've made this analogy before: let's suppose there's a track team, led by a head coach, with a high jumping squad, trained by a high jump coach. The high jump coach proudly says four out of the five boys on his squad can jump over 5' 6". "Big deal!" says the team's head coach. "I'm setting a new standard: how many boys can jump over 6"0"?" It turns out only one of the boys can. The head coach declares that the high jump coach is "failing" his athletes, based on this new, more "realistic" standard.

Would anyone think the head coach was doing anything to help the high jumpers or their coach by arbitrarily changing the "standard" for his high jumpers like this? Would it at all affect the team's record or performance in actual track meets? Would his criteria for success let us know how high each boy actually jumped, or how well they responded to coaching? Would it tell us anything about the high jump coach's ability to get the best out of his athletes?

Andrew Cuomo and John King and Merryl Tisch and all the other grand Pooh-Bahs of New York have decided to arbitrarily shift the definition of "proficiency" for New York's kids. There is no evidence that this will affect their ability to learn in the slightest, just as there's no evidence yelling at a high jumper: "Jump higher!" will actually raise his altitude. This entire exercise is pointless: it's not like this new data tells us anything we didn't already know.

So why are they doing it? Why are the reformies, including SecEd Arne Duncan, insisting this arbitrary change is helpful? What do they hope to gain? Let's ask one of the foot soldiers in the reformy crusades, Andy Smarick:

In the spring of 2015—assuming that the two testing consortia hold together—states will administer the first round of Common Core–aligned assessments. If those tests end up true to their billing (meaning they are accurate predictors of college- and career-readiness), proficiency scores across the land will plummet (see today’s very good editorial from the NY Daily News and this WSJ piece on a boycott-threat in New York).

When those scores are publicly released in the summer of 2015, lots of parents are going to be looking for solutions. The reform community should have a response.

Unless there’s a clear playbook for how we should respond, the vacuum will be filled by excuses (The tests are wrong! Everything is fine!) and old, ineffective, but popular and establishment-friendly interventions (More spending! Reduce class sizes!).

If I were a state chief, I’d have a team, off to the side, working on this right now. We would be drafting new policies, working on communications plans, and much, much more.

The reform community has a well-known tool-kit for our most distressed schools. But a counterpart for our suburban schools is conspicuously missing.

Folks will be looking for answers soon. [emphasis mine]

This isn't just mere speculation on Smarick's part: he was the New Jersey Deputy Commissioner of Education under Chris Cerf, one of the reformiest of the reformy. Smarick has been in on the game for years, and it's clear what the goal is: to sow seeds of doubt outside the big urban districts about public education itself. Hell, even Cerf admitted he was doing just that in New Jersey this past year with his revised school "report cards":

State Education Commissioner Chris Cerf – who acknowledged the reports have mistakes — has made overhauling their format a major project in his efforts to improve schools. While he intends to intervene aggressively in failing schools, he said parents, boards and superintendents elsewhere should use this data to find ways to address weaknesses in their districts.

Some schools may have to grapple with unpleasant surprises. This data “will make clear that there are a number of schools out there that perhaps are a little bit too satisfied with how they are doing when compared with how other schools serving similar populations are doing,” Cerf said. [emphasis mine]

Grading schools on proficiency rates helps in this endeavor, because they are not designed as metrics of school efficiency and can be easily spun. It also helps when the tests are secret, which keeps the public from vetting them. Add in a complex "report card" system like Cerf's, or an easily manipulable  A-F system like Tony Bennett's, and you've got all the pieces in place to make the case that good schools are actually lousy.

And once you do that, the sky's the limit! Good-bye masters bumps, step guides, tenure, and teachers unions; hello Merit Pay Fairy and crappy wages and benefits! You can bring "choice" to the suburbs and even rural areas, thanks to "virtual" charter schools. The privatizers, who aren't even trying to conceal their profit motive anymore, can implement all their reformy plans to move public revenue away from public schools and toward private contractors, just like in our incredibly inefficient health care and national security sectors.

The key is to sell the case to the American public that public schools are a uniform disaster and only privatization and de-unionizing the teacher corps can "fix" our education system. To do that, the test scores must show America's children are failing. But the payoff is so potentially large that it's worth it to these people and their patrons to make radical, incoherent changes like yesterday's.

It's completely contradictory to tell the parents of New York State that this new system is more "accurate," and then within the same breath tell them not to worry that their child, who was doing well before, is now failing. That these people are willing to stand up in front of the public and display such addled thinking tells us how badly they want to make the case against public schools; they are willing to risk looking like buffoons to get what they want.

Maybe that's a function of how little regard they have for the public: they actually think people are going to passively accept this nonsense. But I'll predict they are about to experience the politically perilous consequences of telling parents their kids suck.

More on this in a bit.

Guys, let's keep telling America's parents how much their kids suck! People will LOVE that! 

Save Valerie Strauss from Jeff Bezos

So Mr. Amazon is buying the Washington Post - gosh, I haven't been this excited since Kate named the baby...

Honestly, who cares? Newspapers are dying, and everyone knows it. Why should we give a flying fig?

Oh, yeah - that:

There's one area where Bezos has been hyper-active, but largely unknown to the general public: education reform. A look at the Bezos Family Foundation, which was founded by Jackie and Mike Bezos but is financed primarily by Jeff Bezos, reveals a fairly aggressive effort in recent years to press forward with a neoliberal education agenda:

—The Bezos Foundation has donated to Education Reform Now, a nonprofit organization that funds attack advertisements against teachers' unions and other advocacy efforts to promote test-based evaluations of teachers. Education Reform Now also sponsors Democrats for Education Reform.

—The Bezos Foundation provided $500,000 to NBC Universal to sponsor the Education Nation, a media series devoted to debating high-stakes testing, charter schools, and other education reforms.

—The Bezos Foundation provided over $100,000 worth of Amazon stock to the League of Education Voters Foundation to help pass the education reform in Washington State. Last year, the group helped pass I-1240, a ballot measure that created a charter school system in Washington State. In many states, charter schools open the door for privatization by inviting for-profit charter management companies to take over public schools that are ostensibly run by non-profits.

Other education philanthropy supported by the Bezos Foundation include KIPP, Teach for America, and many individual charter schools, including privately funded math and science programs across the country.

But will Bezos' interest in changing education policy affect his control of the Post? Only time will tell.

As always, bravo to the great Lee Fang for reporting on this. I just have one addendum:

The best mainstream media education journalist working today is Valerie Strauss - an employee of the Washington-Bezos Post.

Strauss is one of the very few journalists working for a corporate media outfit who is willing to call out reformy-types when they spew the latest Gates-appoved platitude. She does more than just report the objections to the corporate reform agenda; she takes the time to understand them. Strauss stands head-and-shoulders above almost any other education journalist in her commitment to giving both sides of the reform debate a chance to be heard.

If Jeff Bezos wants the Washington Post to remain a credible source of news and opinion, he must keep Valerie Strauss in her position. 

Perhaps we could let him know how we feel - politely, of course.

Jeff Bezos, please remember: it doesn't get any better than Valerie Strauss.

Reformy Right Illogic

They just love to hate on Matt Damon. It's a little creepy:

Actor Matt Damon is a strong supporter of America's public schools. Just two years ago, the star spoke passionately about the importance of public schools at a Washington DC "Save our Schools" rally. In fact, the actor is so impressed with public school teachers that he has demanded they receive a pay raise. That passion and conviction, however, does not apply to Damon's own children, who will not be enrolled into the Los Angeles public school system. 

In an interview with the Guardian published Saturday, Damon revealed that he had just moved to Los Angeles from New York, but that he didn't "have a choice" when it came to putting his four daughters into private schools. The multi-millionaire did say that it was "a major moral dilemma" and then made the bizarre excuse that the public schools aren't "progressive" enough.

This would probably mark the first time anyone has ever complained that America's public schools, especially in Los Angeles, aren't left-wing enough.

I know people who follow Breitbart aren't too sharp, so I'll blog slowly:

Matt Damon wants public schools that pay teachers well and treat them with respect, don't over-test students, are well-resourced, have small class sizes, employ a rich curriculum, and foster a love of learning. There was a time in America when many public schools did most, if not all, of these things (if not for all students). In California, this time was just before right-wing maniacs starting using referenda to gut the state of needed revenue, sucking one of the greatest education systems in the world down into the muck.

Since Damon wants these things for all children, it naturally follows he wants them for his own children. He can't get them in Los Angeles these days, partly because of the wingnuts, and partly because extremely wealthy people have taken over that city's education policies, making them, indeed, far less "progressive."

It is not hypocritical, then, that Matt Damon would spend his own money to send his children to schools that share his (and I would assume his wife's) values. It in no way diminishes his argument that public schools must stop heading down their current path. If anything, Damon would be a hypocrite if he didn't send his children to schools that adhered to his education philosophies.

We went over this last year with Leonie Haimson: she advocates for small class sizes in the public schools. She can't get them for her own kid, so she's sending him to a private school. That isn't hypocritical in the slightest; it's completely consistent.

What's hypocritical is for Chris Christie to say that public schools spend too much, and then send his own kids to private schools that spend a fortune. What's hypocritical is for Barack Obama to bribe states into using top-down, test-based teacher evaluation systems while sending his own kids to schools that do not engage in that practice. What's hypocritical is for Bill Gates or Merryl Tisch to create a culture of test-based accountability when their own children go to schools that eschew that very culture. What's hypocritical is for Michelle Rhee and Kevin Huffman to push policies that deprive schools of necessary resources while sending their child to a private school that is more than adequately resourced.

 That's hypocrisy, my libertarian friends. Get the difference?

No, we don't.

Reformy Money Pours Into NJ

Anthony Cody makes the case that the recent resignation of Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett is the outcome of just one more scandal in long line of "corporate education reform" failures. This entire movement is beginning to collapse under the weight of its own mendacity; the day of reckoning has finally arrived.

That may be, but reforminess isn't going away any time soon, so long as the money to sustain the "reformers" keeps gushing. Take, for example, New Jersey: 

Newark's Teach for America is getting a boost from the Walton Family Foundation, which has pledged $2 million to the program that brings young teachers into under-served classrooms.

Newark was one of several cities that will share the $20 million donation from the foundation.

“With this critical investment, Teach For America will be able to bring effective teachers into some of the most under-resourced classrooms in the country while simultaneously working to develop more of our talented corps members as long-term champions of educational equity and excellence,” said Matt Kramer, co-chief executive officer of Teach For America.

The money headed to Newark will be able to support 369 first and second year teachers who have committed to work two yeas at high-need schools.

Leave to the Star-Ledger to report this without any context whatsoever. The truth is that there is scant little evidence that TFA's corps members - who get a total of five weeks of summer training before being thrown into a classroom - are "effective" when compared to teachers who pursue degrees in education. Gary Rubinstein shows us TFA's training is wholly inadequate, and the claims of great "learning gains" from TFAers are little better than lies. High-quality research shows TFAers are not a superior substitute to well-trained, experienced teachers; in truth, TFA's high attrition rate works against the goal of improving student achievement.

TFA stopped being about classroom effectiveness long ago; it is now a political organization. And it's expensive, spending over $38,000 for each corps member who starts teaching. School districts like Chicago and Philadelphia, reeling from massive budget cuts and school closings, continue to pay TFA to place their corps members into schools.

But not just any schools: increasingly, TFA has become a de facto staffing agency for charter schools. As EduShyster reports, TFA is sending more and more of its recruits to charters managed by the big, national chains: KIPP, Rocketship, UNO, Imagine, etc. One ancillary benefit for real estate developers is that TFA gives them a consistent, constantly churning supply of yuppies, perfect for urban gentrification. Newark's Teachers Village is only one of several projects popping up all over the country that take advantage of TFA's steady supply of college-educated renters, desperately needed to "turn around" neighborhoods and raise property values.

These nascent urban hipsters are taking away unionized teaching jobs; nonetheless, unions - including some teachers unions - support these projects (which benefit from enormous tax gifts) because they create temporary unionized construction jobs. You can certainly understand why the Waltons, who run one of the most anti-labor corporations in the nation, would want to invest in a union-busting outfit like TFA - especially when some teachers unions are willing to shoot themselves in the foot and support bringing more corps members into their cities.

The resistance to TFA has grow sharply in recent months; however, as long as they have money to burn, they won't be going away any time soon. Same with the Gates Foundation:

HOW WE WORK

GRANT 

Council of Chief State School Officers

---

Date: June 2013
Purpose: to support the Council of Chief State School Officers’ Institute for Transition and Transformation Services partnership with the NJ DOE to support the state’s efforts to support high quality implementation of the Common Core of State Standards
Amount: $799,825
Term: 12
Topic: College-Ready
Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA
Program: United States
Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia 

Nearly $800K to imbed the Common Core into New Jersey from the Gates Foundation: they must be cheering in the Montclair school district's central office...

Common Core really means only one thing for New Jersey: testing, testing, testing. Reformy types like Andy Smarick, formerly Number 2 at the NJDOE, have already admitted the ultimate goal of these tests is to make New Jersey's excellent public schools look as bad as possible, allowing them to move their privatization agenda out to the 'burbs. Never mind these kids are already over-tested; we're going to pile more tests on top of them and stress them out further so we can implement even more innumerate test-based evaluations for teachers.

When parents and teachers learn about all this, they are going to rise up in revolt against the Common Core. Good thing the Gates people have coughed up so much money for propaganda a public relations campaign to quell the public's disgust while radically altering New Jersey's high-performing school system.

Anyone else in Jersey want our reformy money? "Cause we've got plenty!

Bennett Whines About "Tone"

No one has been a bigger critic of Chris Christie than yours truly. But if you go back through this blog, you'll find I've never once made a crack about his weight. Part of that is simple decency; part is my being close to Christie's age and knowing first hand how hard it can be to get enough exercise.

But the primary reason I don't bring up Christie's waistline is that it's not relevant. He hasn't attacked others for their appearance (as far as I know), and he hasn't pushed policies that punish or reward people based on their size. Why, then, would I bring up a personal matter about the governor when it's not germane? It would be gratuitous and unwarranted, so I don't do it.

On the other hand, I have made what can be described fairly as a personal attack on Christie regarding the choices he and his wife have made for their own children's education. Bringing Christie's kids into it is, admittedly, as personal as it gets. So why is that different? Simple: because it's relevant.

This is a guy who has been cutting school funding for New Jersey's children - particularly our poor children - while complaining about education spending every chance he gets. Yet he sends his own kids to a beautiful, exclusive private school that spends gobs more money than the public schools; a school that doesn't have to educate children who are at-risk or have special needs or who don't speak English at home, the most expensive children to educate.

That is hypocrisy of the highest order. Is pointing that out personal? You bet it is: it speaks directly to the man's character. But is it unwarranted? No, not at all: it's directly relevant to his actions, policies, and words. You can argue over the tone with which I point this out, but understand that is no more than a matter of taste. What shouldn't be in dispute is that the thrust of this "personal" attack is both fair and relevant. Whining about "tone" becomes a way to avoid a criticism that is, without question, germane to the debate.

I bring all this up because we've had a couple of remarkable examples of whining about "tone" this week in reformy circles. The most well-known, of course, is the spectacular spasm of self-righteous indignation that came from Florida's recently-departed education chief, Tony Bennett. I imagine most readers here now know the story of Bennett's grade changing scandal; how he changed the evaluation of a charter school in contradiction to his own staff's assessment.

Bennett, in the tradition of all American politicians caught in a scandal, went before the cameras to deliver a non-apology apology that went heavy on the mea and light on the culpa:

Tony Bennett announced his immediate resignation at a news conference, saying that he while he did nothing wrong he didn't want to be a distraction to ongoing efforts to overhaul Florida's education system. Emails published by The Associated Press this week show that Bennett and his Indiana staff scrambled last fall to ensure Christel DeHaan's school received an A, despite poor 10th-grade algebra scores that initially earned it a C. 

Bennett called that interpretation "malicious and unfounded" and said he would call for Indiana's inspector general to look into the allegations because he is certain he will be cleared of wrongdoing. 

He said it would be unfair to Gov. Rick Scott "to have to spend my time and the State Board (of Education's) time, as things continue to trickle out, defending myself." He called the allegations "politically motivated." He said the decision to step down was his and that both Scott and former Gov. Jeb Bush had urged him to remain on the job. [emphasis mine]

The problem with Bennett's screed is that the facts are not in dispute. He gamed the system to change the grade for a school that did not perform well on the state's Algebra test; even his staff said so. That school was founded by Christel DeHaan, a well-known contributor to Republican politicians, including Bennett himself. He claims he didn't act unethically, that he would never do such a thing - but his actions and his words are there for all to see.

Are the allegations against Bennett "politically motivated"? Maybe, but so what? He did what he did, and he got caught. It's not "malicious" to make a connection between DeHaan's support and his scrambling to change the grade, any more than it's "unfounded" to point out that Bennett's wife, Tina, now works at the for-profit corporation he chose to run some of Indianapolis's schools.

A personal attack? Yeah, OK; I wouldn't use the word "attack," but it's certainly personal. But it's also relevant; it's warranted; it matters. Bennett may now be coming to the good Lord about making the education debate about policy instead of personality (watch towards the end of the video, if you can take it), but that doesn't make the questions about his personal integrity - and how that reflects on his policies - any less germane.

The default position of the "reform" movement is that teachers and their unions are not to be trusted; all reformy policies flow from this axiom. Well, live by questioning motivations, die by questioning motivations. If you spend your day impugning the motives of teachers and their unions, don't be surprised when karma comes back around and bites you in the butt.

From one guy who impugns the motives of teachers and their unions...

...to another.

Ultimate Chiefs For Change Fail: B'bye, Bennett!

Hey Tony, on your way out, don't let the door hit you on the...

Less than eight months after starting his job, Florida's education commissioner Tony Bennett resigned on Thursday, amid a growing scandal over policy changes he made while serving as schools superintendent in Indiana.

"I asked Governor Scott to accept my resignation, and he did," Bennett said during a press conference.

Bennett's plans to resign were first reported by the Tampa Bay Times. He has faced increasing pressure to step down since the Associated Press published emails on Monday showing that he quietly changed Indiana's school grading formula. The emails show that the formula change happened when Christel House Academy, a charter school backed by influential Republican donors, received a low grade under the original formula.

Since the AP story was published, Bennett has defended himself by saying that the grading formula unfairly dinged Christel House and some other schools for not having traditional grade structures. Christel House didn't offer classes to high school juniors and seniors, he said, so "the data for grades 11 and 12 came in as zero," Bennett said.

But an analysis by New America Foundation's education expert Anne Hyslop claims that Bennett's defense "doesn't add up." "In truth, Christel House was never evaluated on its poor high school performance," Hyslop wrote. "Instead, all of the high school data were thrown out – a little detail Bennett failed to mention." [emphasis mine]

Golly, isn't this a bit premature? I mean, Mike Petrilli said we shouldn't rush to judgement: after all, Bennett is Mike's friend! Isn't that enough proof for anyone that Bennett is a straight-shooter? Plus, Rick Hess vouched for him! What more do you people need?!

Bennett said he stood by everything contained in the emails. When devising Indiana's grading system, he said, he expected "top performing charter schools" to be rewarded for their performance, but "that didn't happen."

"We found a statistical anomaly that did not allow 13 schools -- there's been a focus on one school -- but did not allow 13 schools to have their grades truly reflect their performance, and they were unfairly penalized. That wasn't rigging anything," Bennett said. "We did the right thing for Indiana schools and Indiana children."

BULL. Bennett's own staff told him Christel House's "C" came because of bad performance on the state Algebra test. Worse, the system was already rigged to give "combined" grade-level schools - which are mostly charters - an unfair advantage. No surprise: as Matt DiCarlo reported last year, the Indiana A-F school grading system, Bennett's crowning achievement, gives a big advantage to affluent schools over schools that serve poor kids.

This scandal is certainly an indictment of Bennett's personal integrity; he really had no choice but to resign. But make no mistake: Bennett's transgressions are the inevitable outcome of the ideologically-based "reforms" that he and his fellow "Chiefs For Change" are foisting on school systems across America.

Leave aside Bennett's lack of personal ethics; look at the damage he has already done in Florida:

Florida has been among the fastest states to adopt changes favored by education reformers, from school report cards to radical changes to teacher evaluations and tenure. Some reformers worry that Bennett's resignation could set the state back as it tries to implement Common Core State Standards and grapples with a new wave of standardized testing tied to the core.

The loss will also be a setback for Gov. Rick Scott (R), who appointed Bennett after he lost reelection in Indiana and has supported his reforms. After the allegations surfaced, Scott praised Bennett, telling reporters he was "doing a great job."

His most recent move was to change Florida's school grading formula, but he did so publicly. "The Board adopted a recommendation requested by many of Florida's district superintendents that implements a rule that stipulates no individual school’s grade will drop more than one letter grade in any one year until the state’s transition to the Common Core standards is complete," a July 16 Florida Department of Education memo read.

You can't have a fair, transparent, and informative system of evaluation for schools if it can be changed on the whims of one man (yes, one: the board is clearly a rubber-stamping operation). In a way, what Bennett did in Florida is worse than what he did in Indiana: he gamed the entire system, not just the results for a few schools, to keep parents and teachers from rising up in open revolt against Scott. His decision was purely political; it had nothing to do with improving education.

This may be the most dangerous legacy of Jeb! Bush's "Chiefs For Change": they have moved to consolidate power over districts and schools within their own state-level offices, usurping local control, empowering privatizers, and politicizing school policy in the process.

• Chris Cerf (NJ) now leads a secretive DOE - hellbent on usurping local control and depriving urban schools of resources - that approves charter schools based on political and personal connections, punishes other charters for taking special education students, and is implementing an illogical and innumerate teacher evaluation system with minimal input from educators.
• Stephen Bowen (ME) pushes dubious "virtual learning" schools as money pours in from the industry; implements a school grading system, like Cerf and Bennett, that punishes schools serving poor children; and operates with such little transparency that he is in an open war with state senators.
• Hanna Skandera (NM) flouts state law regarding her own qualifications, arrogantly bestowing titles upon herself she hasn't earned, even as her department makes careless mistakes she'd never accept from local districts. [Adding: And let's not forget Skandera's dubious attempts to bring "virtual" schooling into New Mexico, or her coziness with corporate donors to Jeb! Bush's foundation.]
• Janet Baressi (OK) tries to sell her A-F school evaluation system (similar to Bennett's) by falsely claiming support for it where there is none; refused to step up and help school districts suffering from natural disasters until she was publicly embarrassed; and attempted to blame local school districts for problems that were clearly of her own making. 
• Deborah Gist (RI) has alienated the teachers and the students of her state, misusing tests for graduation requirements when they are clearly inadequate for that purpose.
• Kevin Huffman (TN) has lost support from Tennessee's parents and teachers; created a radical new compensation system at the behest of wealthy funders that slashes teacher pay; and snatches control from local school boards to install favored charter schools.
• John White (LA)... man, I don't even know where to start with this guy...

The common threads for the "Chiefs": autocracy, secrecy, usurpation of local control, a culture of punishment, excuse-making for inadequate school funding, and unaccountability. Tony Bennett may be the personification of their "values," but every one of them, in his or her own way, is carrying out Bennett's program in their respective states.

I can think of no more dangerous group for the future of American public education than Jeb! Bush's "Chiefs For Change." May they all quickly go the way of Tony Bennett; our students will be far better off the moment they do.

One down, seven to go...

I'm running out of "Chiefs"!

ADDING: One more thing:

I like Joy Resmovits, the reporter who wrote this story; she's knowledgable and usually fair, which makes her stand head and shoulders above most "journalists" writing about education. But in the bottom graphs of her piece, she gets reactions to the Bennett resignation from three education "experts":

• Michael Petrilli
• Rick Hess
• Andy Smarick

Seriously? Hess at least taught a few years and has a degree in education. Smarick has no background or degrees in education; Petrilli I think worked at a summer camp. Is there no one who actually works in a school, Joy, that you could add to your Rolodex for occasions like this?

Further: both Petrilli and Hess provided platforms for Bennett to make his excuses (see links above). Both said outright they consider Bennett a friend. And Smarick's reformy credentials are well known.

Come on, Joy: I know you can do better than this. A little balance is all I ask.

Derrell Bradford's Fraudulent Voucher Argument

Andy Smarick, former New Jersey Deputy Commissioner of Education, interviewed B4K's Derrell Bradford for the Fordham Institute's Flypaper Blog. Masochist that I am, I just couldn't resist:

Lots of ed reformers, especially those on the political left, still oppose publicly funded voucher programs that would enable disadvantaged kids to go to private schools. What’s your response?

I am a Democrat, and I support vouchers, tax credits, etc. with all of my heart and in the deepest and truest place in my being. And there are a few reasons for this. First, I had the experience of getting a voucher when there were none in Maryland (as there still, unfortunately, aren’t any) and that experience literally saved my life. I never go to Dartmouth or the University of Pennsylvania without that, and I wake up every day knowing that more kids should have that chance. Second, I’ve had too many friends, family members, and neighbors, wrecked by schools that did not work and that had long histories of not working. Educational opportunity is a personal thing for me…and every kid’s future is more important than preserving anyone’s notion of residential assignment as the primary way we distribute education. [emphasis mine]

My friends, it is time to dispense with Derrell Bradford's foolish argument for vouchers once and for all.

As he told NJ Spotlight, Bradford went to the prestigious St. Paul's School in Baltimore, Maryland. St. Paul's has an operating budget of $19 million, and it enrolls 755 students, for a per pupil cost of $25,166. That's the operating budget, mind you: we don't even know how St. Paul's treats its capital expenses.

Comparing school spending amounts is notoriously complex*, especially when trying to measure the relative spending of public and private schools. I'll acknowledge this is only ball-parking it at best; however, let's use some figures from what is generally regarded as a reliable source, the US Census Bureau. Their latest published reports put the Baltimore City Public Schools per pupil spending at $15,483; Maryland's per pupil spending is $13,871. 

Keep in mind that St. Paul's is, by Bradford's own definition, a "hoity-toity high school" that does not and need not accept English language learners or children with even mild learning disabilities. The public schools of Maryland do not enjoy that luxury: they must take all children, including the most expensive ones to educate.

So Derrell Bradford's education - the one he says he wants for all kids "with all of my heart and in the deepest and truest place in my being" - cost far more than the education public school students get right now. The question, naturally, is whether or not he is willing to pay for the upgrade.

Nick Gillespie: New Jersey spends a ton of money on students. Why are the results not up to snuff? 

Bradford: Because we're spending on all the wrong things, like ridiculous facilities, right? Ridiculous, you know, bells and whistles that we don't need. And the most important things, like breaking the monopoly, empowering people with choice, focusing on teacher quality and compensation - we don't do that stuff. 

"Bells and whistles" are the problem, huh? "Ridiculous facilities" are keeping kids back?

From the St. Paul's website:

Middleton Athletic Center
 

Built in 2000, the 4,700 square foot Middleton Athletic Center has locker rooms for all Middle and Upper school students, a 2,500 square foot state-of-the-art weight room, an athletic trainer's room, a video room, three basketball courts, and a wrestling room with two full-sized wrestling mats. 

The Fields
 

The synthetic grass at Tullai Field is the same playing surface used by NFL teams. All of our football, soccer, and lacrosse teams play on the stadium field, where we have hosted MIAA playoff games, NCAA lacrosse teams, as well as various lacrosse tournaments and clinics. 

Blenckstone Field, our baseball diamond, is an immaculate all-natural field that is second to none in the area. All of our Middle and Upper School baseball teams play and practice on this field. 

Thompson field is named in memory of David Thompson '97. The field hosts soccer, football, and lacrosse games in the fall and spring. 

A new multi-purpose field has been constructed at the south end of campus. The area will contain two soccer fields in the fall and serve as a practice baseball facility in the spring. 

Tennis Facility 

St. Paul's has 10 har-tru courts and four hard courts for tennis. The har-tru courts are consider some of the best in the Baltimore area. Homeland Racquet Club operates a club program out of the facility, which has a beautiful clubhouse overlooking the courts. 

Kinsolving Gym 

Kinsolving Gym has great history as the School's original indoor athletic facility. The gym is used by all the basketball teams for practice and for sub-varsity level games in the winter. 

Kelly Gymnasium (Squash Courts) 

The Squash team practices and plays matches in the squash courts in Kelly Gymnasium attached to the Middle School. 

Other Practice Facilities
St. Paul's ice hockey team travels to Mimi DiPietro Ice Rink in Baltimore for practice and games. [emphasis mine]

I don't know about you folks, but I'd consider squash courts a pretty big "bell and/or whistle."

Just like a huge, new arts center:

Facilities

A 28,000 square foot facility for the dramatic, vocal, and fine arts shared with St. Paul’s School for Girls. 

320-seat theater
music and art studios
set design shop
sound and lighting booth
380-seat dining facility

Well, at least they share with the girls; times are tough, after all...

Here's the funny thing about these "bells and whistles": they may seem peripheral, but they actually help kids at elite private schools develop resumes that enhnce their college applications. Take, for example, Derrell Bradford (1993):

The BCMSLL [Baltimore City Middle School Lacrosse League] is working on a tracking program to follow players after they leave the program, but only a few are known to have attended private schools. Defensemen Derrell Bradford and Carroll Ford went to St. Paul's. Bradford later enrolled at Dartmouth and Ford at Bates College in Maine. Another graduate of the middle school program, Arthur Chen, is a ninth-grader who plays goalie at McDonogh. [emphasis mine]

So Derrell got to go to a private high school that allowed him to play a sport denied to most urban youth - a school that spends at least $25,000 per student a year. Tell me, Derrell: do you think many of the voucher schools in New Jersey would have had a lacrosse program on NCAA-level fields for the $9,000 a year the Opportunity Scholarship Act would have provided?

Do I really have to point out how utterly, totally fraudulent Bradford's argument for vouchers is? Does he believe for a second that Opportunity Scholarships vouchers will provide any children in Newark or Paterson or Camden with the opportunity to attend a school like St. Paul's? Especially when he himself says our schools are already spending too much on "bells and whistles"?

Let's do a simple calculation*: St. Paul's spends 62% more per pupil than Baltimore, and 81% more than all of Maryland. The census data doesn't have spending figures for individual cities in New Jersey, but it does put per pupil spending for the entire state at $15,968. If we were to raise per pupil spending by the same proportion that St. Paul's spends over Maryland's public schools, per pupil spending in New Jersey would rise to $28,902.

Then every kid in Trenton could have a school with squash courts and music studios. Every kid in Jersey City could have a school with a set design shop and an NCAA-level turf field for lacrosse: just like Derrell Bradford had when he was coming up. Wouldn't that be great?

Unfortunately, we live in the real world. In New Jersey, there are scant few openings at private schools in the cities to begin with (especially with the continuing closings of urban Catholic schools). The amounts of money available from these Opportunity Scholarships vouchers wouldn't even begin to cover the costs of a school like St. Paul's. And keep in mind that schools like St. Paul's do not enroll many - if any - children who are at-risk, or learning English, or have special needs: the most expensive children to educate.

The data makes clear that the overwhelming amount of money coming from the Opportunity Scholarship Act would go to yeshivas in Lakewood that already enroll the students whose families would claim the vouchers. Vouchers would do next to nothing to "save" children in New Jersey's cities. And yet Bradford has the audacity to pretend that "hoity-toity" schools would be available to all children if we just had more "choice."

St. Paul's, to their credit, offers financial aid to families that qualify; nearly every elite prep school does. These rarified institutions do not need government funding to open their doors to deserving, talented poor children, as most sit on top of large endowments which they can use to subsidize tuition payments. The children who receive vouchers will not be going to these "hoity-toity" schools; they will be attending small, urban, mostly religious schools. There is no evidence these schools do any better at educating children when accounting for student characteristics than public schools.

It is dishonest for Derrell Bradford to make the comparison between voucher schools and his own alma mater when he knows full well vouchers will not give children the same experience he had. 

There's much more to debunk in this interview, but I'll save that for another time.


* Spend some time reading around Bruce Baker's site to get a sense of the scope of the problem. Here's just one quirk from the Census data as relates to New Jersey:

An analysis based on derived statistics can be misleading and misinterpreted because of differences between school systems in accounting methodology, governmental organization, and economic structure. For example, current spending or per pupil current spending as a measure of a school system’s current expenses can be misleading because different school systems have different criteria on what they classify as current expenses. 

Most school systems in the United States have a capitalization threshold of $5,000 for supplies (meaning supplies with a unit cost of less than $5,000 are classified as a current expense, while supplies costing at least $5,000 are accounted for as capital outlay). Larger school systems, however, often have a capitalization threshold larger than $5,000 (thus will have more types of supplies classified as a current expense than smaller school districts). School systems in New Jersey, on the other hand, have a capitalization threshold of only $2,000 (thus will have fewer types of supplies classified as a current expense than most school districts). Any analysis involving current spending or per pupil current spending should note that school system and state disparities exist based on what is classified as a current expense.

Huh - I never knew that. Depending on where capital expenses are placed in comparative data, that could make a real difference in relative spending figures.

The easiest way to compare per pupil spending is to gather up all the money a school system spends in a year and divide it by the number of students enrolled. Sounds simple, right? Except that determining what goes into that pile of money, and (believe it or not) who gets listed as enrolled where is exceedingly complex.

So, no, I don't think my "simple calculation" is literally the difference between St. Paul's spending and that of public schools; I'm not sure we could ever arrive at an answer to that question that would please everyone. But there is no doubt that "hoity-toity" schools like St. Paul's spend way more money per pupil than neighboring public schools. That extra money buys lots of "bells and whistles": small class sizes, outstanding athletic facilities, arts centers, technology, etc.

My point stands: the voucher schools Bradford touts will never provide the type of education he enjoyed at St. Paul's. Arguing about which metrics to use when measuring spending distracts from this irrefutable fact.