Economist Casually Insults New York's Principals

If you work in education these days, economists rule your world. And none more so than Harvard's Thomas Kane, (in)famously known as the director of the Gates Measure of Effective Teaching project. Kane -- admittedly a very smart researcher -- commands an outsized presence in the education policy world.

Unfortunately for you New York principals, this eminent professor doesn't think very highly of you:

Although the use of test scores has received all the attention, the most consequential change in the law has been overlooked: One of a teacher’s observers must now be drawn from outside his or her school — someone whose only role is to comment on teaching.

The fact that 96% of teachers were given the two highest ratings last year — being deemed either “effective” or “highly effective” — is a sure sign that principals have not been honest to date. An external perspective will make it easier for longtime colleagues to have a frank conversation about each other’s instruction. [emphasis mine]

Well, isn't that lovely: a casual smear of an entire profession, right in the pages of the New York Daily News. How do you feel about that, principals? You go about assembling the best possible staffs you can, given the constraints of your budgets, but Tom Kane thinks you're not "honest," because you deem your staff to be effective.

Let me go back to the latest NYS Technical Report for Growth Measures. Here's page 43:

According to the report, 5 percent of New York's "tested" teachers were found to be either "Developing" or "Ineffective" two years in a row on the state's growth rating. It seems to me that this is very reasonably aligned with a 4 percent of teachers getting an overall rating of lower than "Effective."

I mean, this is the whole point of Kane's vaunted "multiple measures," right? That we didn't want to hurt the profession by letting statistical noise dictate decisions? That we should have a pattern of poor performance before we make a high-stakes decision, and it should be corroborated by multiple assessments of a teacher's performance?

Well, then, what's the problem? 5 percent of growth-measured teachers get "Developing" or worse for two years in a row; 4 percent are rated overall "Developing" or worse. Seems to me the system is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

And when I say "designed," I mean exactly that. These measures are normative, meaning they yield roughly bell curve-like distributions. We call the bottom 5 percent "bad" because they are the bottom 5 percent. If we raised the overall effectiveness of the teaching corps in New York so that the average student passed Algebra II at age 9, we'd still say the bottom 5 percent of teachers were "bad" because their students weren't passing Calculus. It's all relative.

What we've got here is yet another example of someone -- again, a very smart someone -- looking at the performance of children on academic measures from the outside in and not seeing how the entire system may affect outcomes. For example:

I’ve carefully studied the best systems for rating teachers — and I can tell you the governor picked the right fight. The deal in Albany last week will finally give schools the tools they need to manage and improve teaching. Let’s hope they use them wisely.

The tenure process is the place to start. It’s the most important decision a principal makes. One poor decision can burden thousands of future students, parents, colleagues and supervisors.

Traditionally, principals have used much too low a standard, promoting everyone but the very worst teachers. An NFL coach would never forego 25 years of future draft picks in order to sign a mediocre player to a long-term contract. Yet principals in New York do so every year.

First of all, the analogy is ridiculous if only because the jobs are so different. Depending on who you ask, the career of an NFL player is between 3 and 6 years. Of course, if we keep making teachers' lives miserable by imposing noisy growth measures on them, we might get their career length down to that level as well...

NFL teams sign contracts with mediocre players all the time. Why? Because they need to fill out their rosters, and they have to get what they can get with the money they have. It is reasonable to think a team would extend a contract on a bench warmer if they looked out at the player market and saw that they couldn't do any better given their budgets. There isn't an unlimited supply of Richard Shermans available to every team.

And it's reasonable to think they would offer a player extended time on that contract in lieu of money over a shorter time. Why? Because the length of a contract has a value to a player -- just like tenure has value to a teacher.

I am always amused at how quickly reformy folks come to the conclusion that tenure doesn't have a value to teachers; as if you could just take it away, and the teacher labor market wouldn't have a response. Of course tenure has a value, and I would think an economist would be the first person to point this out.

Tenure, like an extended NFL contract, is part of an overall compensation package. Make it harder to earn, and you will almost certainly affect the supply of people willing to do the job for the same amount of the rest of the compensation package.

Think of it this way: suppose you're an average NFL defensive lineman. You look out at the labor market for huge, muscular guys who like to hit people. You could go to the WWE, or throw the shot, or work as a bouncer, or whatever. You will or will not decide to enter the NFL based on your overall compensation: salary, benefits, work rights, contractual guarantees, etc. You will weigh all of that against what other parts of the economy are willing to offer you, given your talents and, yes, your love of playing football.

The NFL will attract people like you into the profession based on how they compensate you relative to other professions. If rugby suddenly takes off in the USA, the NFL is going to have a harder time getting the best athletes to take up football. They wouldn't be able to just let "mediocre" players go, because there won't be as many elite athletes ready to take those places.

The teaching corps that we have is the teaching corps we are willing to pay for. 

It makes no sense for even the laziest, least motivated, least competent principal to hang on to "bad" teachers if he knows there are better ones available. What Kane doesn't seem to want to acknowledge is the possibility that principals know the staffs they assemble are as good as they can get given the compensation they can offer.

Which, once again, gets us back to school funding. New York has one of the most inequitable and inadequate school funding systems in the nation. How can its schools possibly compete with the rest of the labor market to recruit and retain the best people as teachers when they don't have the money to pay teachers competitive wages?

Further, how will imposing noisy evaluation systems that impede the freedom of teachers to use their own professional judgment and practice their craft make the profession less attractive? How will withholding tenure protections, which help protect both teachers and taxpayers from political interference, for another year make teaching less desirable? How will bringing in outsiders, who have no sense of a school's culture, for commando raid-style observations enhance the atmosphere in which teachers work?

These are the questions that Thomas Kane, prominent economist, appears to avoid. Instead, he casually besmirches New York principals and blames them for the state education system's alleged failings.

Frankly, I think he owes you all of you Empire State school leaders an apology.

Honest until proven dishonest.

ADDING: Peter Greene has more:

On the one hand, there is some value in watching yourself work on camera. It takes roughly thirty seconds to spot whatever annoying tic you had carefully blocked from your own consciousness, but which your students use to mock you when you're not around. 

On the other hand, handing that video over to a stranger as a means of evaluation is just stupid. 

First, the camera can only cover so much of the classroom. So the video observer will only see a portion of what was going on and catch only a fraction of the teaching environment. 

Because of that, and because of time lag (shoot video, send video, find time to watch video), the feedback will be less useful to the teacher. And how about that, anyway-- if the observer is going to make the trip to have a post-viewing feedback session with the teacher, how much time and hassle have we actually saved, anyway? Of course, we could save more time and hassle if the "feedback" just came in the form of written comments on a form, or a swift e-mail. 

That sort of feedback would be considerably less useful. And you know what else it would do? 

It would remove the need for the outside observer to look a teacher in the eye when he's scuttling her career. As an outsider, the observer already has zero skin in this game, absolutely no stake on the line at all. Add the video, and the observer doesn't even have the minimal human stake involved in talking to someone face to face. [emphasis mine]

This is a very good point. And it reminds me of a post of Bruce Baker's from 2013:

Certainly the economists’ policy response – how to employ crude economic assumptions of human behavior to fix this dreadful perverse incentive – implies that cutting off this financial benefit for malpractice would improve hospital and physician behavior [meanwhile conflating the hospital and physician incentives & roles in the various related processes]. Here is the policy solution recommended by the economists cited in the WaPo article:

If hospitals receive a set amount for every heart surgery they perform, for example, they suddenly have an incentive to reduce complications — they know the extra medical spending will come out of their own budget.

Lost in the economists’ reasoning here are a) the potential longer term financial and career implications to the physician repeatedly entangled in litigation over post-surgical complications, b) and the stress/mental toll on the physician arising from managing complications in tense moments in the OR.

Indeed this is anecdotal, but I’ve not met a physician – surgeon or anesthesiologist – who prefers a day when things go bad in the OR – or would be likely to see dollar signs in those moments of stress. What kind of sick bastard even thinks that way? Well, perhaps the average economist does.

Economists rarely – uh… NEVER face comparable professional stress to managing a patient’s life on the edge – even when they make a massively stupid spreadsheet error stimulating economic turmoil across the globe. Nor do they pay hefty malpractice premiums to shield themselves from such egregious malpractice (despite measurable financial damages). I would assert that the economist never faces the stress of having to care for a classroom of 20 to 40, 5 to 15 year old kids, whose immediate safety and well-being, as well as their long term futures is on the line.  This is in part, why they get away with such ludicrous thinking.

It’s all freakin’ game (Freakin’ used here in a technical freakonomics sense)… a game of playing with big data – several layers removed from reality – from people – from real human consequences.

Perhaps that’s the central issue… even more so than economists’ financial self-interests?

Yep.

Camden State Superintendent Confirms: There's ALWAYS Money for Charter Schools

Earlier this week, Stephen Danley posted a remarkable piece of video. Camden's State Superintendent, Paymon Rouhanifard, met with parents to discuss the fate of McGraw Elementary School, one of five schools scheduled to be either closed or turned over to charter school operators under Rouhanifard's plan.

For nearly 40 minutes, Rouhanifard is intensely cross-examined by parents who are against the conversion of McGraw into a charter school run by the Philadelphia-based charter chain, Mastery. Understand that these parents had absolutely no say whatsoever in the takeover of their neighborhood school: Rouhanifard is free to do whatever he wants in Camden, including abdicating his responsibility to the district's schools.

Rouhanifard, like the superintendents in Newark, Jersey City, and Paterson, serves entirely at the pleasure of Governor Chris Christie. He has no need to answer to the parents, students, and taxpayers of Camden, as they have no ability to remove him through the political process if he ignores their wishes. In New Jersey, local accountability through democratic action is reserved for the suburbs; people of color in the large cities do not enjoy the same privileges:

As you can imagine, the parents in this video are clearly fed up with this state of affairs. What follows is a passionate yet ultimately unsurprising confrontation between people who are frustrated with their continuing disenfranchisement, and a man who apparently couldn't care less.



Before I get to the substance of Rouhanifard's answers, let's acknowledge something quite important: Governor Chris Christie said he chose Paymon Rouhanifard to run Camden's schools because of his "track record." It's clear, after watching this video, that this record has nothing to do with Rouhandifard's very limited experienced in education; no, the "track record" that so impressed Christie is Rouhanifard's uncanny ability to stoically ignore the complaints of parents.

Of course, Rouhanifard was trained to do just this under the tutelage of the master of parental disdain, New York City's former Chancellor of Schools, Joel Klein.



That's Paymon back in 2012 when he worked in New York City, passively taking a verbal beatdown from the intrepid Leonie Haimson, NYC's foremost parent advocate. When I found out Rouhanifard was coming to Camden, I asked Leonie about his tenure in Gotham; she told me his job was to basically push through charter school colocations over the objections of local parents, all while barely pretending to heed their concerns.

What's interesting is that even as Paymon was thickening up his skin in Brooklyn, the NJDOE, with the generous support of the Broad Foundation, was already hatching "secret" plans to take over Camden's schools and dismantle the local district. Given that then-ACTING Education Commissioner Chris Cerf had just come from Klein's NYCDOE, it's no surprise Rouhanifard got the job. The last thing Cerf and Christie ever wanted for Camden was an experienced educator; all they required was someone who would follow orders and wouldn't mind being yelled at.

Give Rouhanifard credit: he may not know anything about actually running schools, but he is a master of phony solicitude. Dig a little deeper into his words, however, and you'll find he can't help but give away the real game:

(3:50) Guys, I want to respond to your questions and concerns; it's hard to do that when everyone's shouting over me. And I'm happy to let you all shout over me for 90 minutes straight if that's what you want to do.  

What I'm trying to communicate to you is that these are not easy decisions to make. And we're doing this because the district and their finances can't renovate this building the same way one of our partners can. And that's a financial decision.  

Now that is very interesting. And it's not a fluke, because Rouhanifard says the same thing just a few minutes later:

(7:52) I'd love to be able to properly address some of the parents' questions here. I want to be helpful. Look, I get that there are anxieties. Guys, for the last three decades, our buildings in this city are falling apart. We haven't had the money to fix them. We don't have the district finances to fix them. Through this partnership, this is our opportunity to do it.  

And academic performance has been falling every year for the last 30 years. So this is our opportunity to do something different. To do something different that we believe will fundamentally improve the quality of education in Camden, and I want to have a conversation about that.  

If you all want to throw rocks at me, by all means. By all means. Not literally. By all means.

A little background is in order:

When Chris Christie fully took over the administration of the Camden City School District in 2013, there was a misperception in some quarters that the district had autonomous up until that point. Nothing could be further from the truth: since 2006, CCSD had been overseen by a state-appointed monitor, who had broad discretion over all aspects of the district's management. The governor actually had veto power over the school board as early as 2002, and several seats on the board were appointees of the governor.

So if there hasn't been any money to renovate CCSD schools, let alone properly maintain them, that's due at least in part to the management of the state itself -- the same state that now employs Rouhanifard. 

The same state that sets the funding for schools, then refuses to follow through on providing money for its own formula. The same state that promised the parents and students of Camden a new district school at Lanning Square, then reneged on that promise and turned over the property to a charter operator that had already failed in Camden.

Of course, there always seems to be enough money for the charter schools in Camden. LEAP Academy, for example opened a brand new facility in 2012, financed with bonds that were never available to the district. Chris Cerf proudly cut the ribbon at the dedication of the building.

That's Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, founder of LEAP, to Cerf's left. I wonder if her overpriced boyfriend took time off from making the students lunch to provide all the dignitaries with refreshments...

LEAP recently got yet another round of funding for capital improvements, no doubt taking advantage of all kinds of tax goodies that, again, are not available to the district schools. The leaders of Camden's charter schools are good at working out these kinds of deals for themselves; Vahan Gureghian, founder of Camden Community Charter School, has had a great deal in Chester, PA for years.

And now here come the so-called "Renaissance Schools," charter schools by another name. TEAM Academy gets to take over the land at Lanning Square and set its own pace in serving the district's students; object, and you will be promptly removed from your office by the South Jersey Democratic machine. Uncommon Schools gets similar support from this same machine, despite its atrocious record on student attrition in Newark. And Mastery gets to take over McGraw, where it will undoubtedly install its controversial discipline practices.

As Rouhanifard says: there's plenty of financing available to help set up these charter operators. But somehow, he can't convince the state to step up and provide funds for renovating Camden's own district schools. And that's hardly the district's fault, as it has been under varying forms of state control for the last 13 years.

Rouhanifard digs his hands in his pockets and shrugs his shoulders: what can he do? He is convinced that he has no choice but to turn over the schools for which he is responsible to outside forces. It's not his place, apparently, to point out that the gobs of money and land available to the charter operators ought to also be made available to the district.

No, Paymon's sad task is to instead tell you "guys"* in Camden that the only way he can come up with the money to fix things is to force you to give up your rights and put your children into privately managed schools. Hey, you can always "vote with your feet" -- just don't expect to vote with your vote, and don't expect to get the same sources of financing for your kids' schools if you choose to keep them in the district.

Strangely, Rouhanifard didn't always feel this way:

"We don't have a lack of resources here. We have an improper allocation of those resources," the district's state-appointed superintendent, Paymon Rouhanifard, has said.

The most divisive expenditure in the district's budget - and one of the most costly - is the $72 million it would transfer to charter and renaissance (district-charter hybrid) schools next year, contributing to per-pupil costs.

The transfer funds increased $17 million to make way for three additional renaissance schools expected to open in the fall. Two are still waiting for state approval.

"There is this perception we're taking resources out of district schools, and it couldn't be further from the truth," Rouhanifard said. "Our per-pupil goes up when families go to charter schools. We think of it as an investment. It's a very fair formula here." [emphasis mine]

That was almost exactly a year ago; back then, Rouhanifard said the shifting of funds to charters was "very fair." Now, he cries poverty as an excuse for charter school expansion. Funny how things changed so quickly...

Again: this is all going according to a plan that was drawn up by the proteges of a California billionaire years ago. Camden, like New Orleans, Newark, and other struggling cities, is an experiment in urban school privatization: an experiment conducted on other people's children.

And Paymon Rouhanifard's job is to conduct this experiment while telling parents, teachers, and students that he has no choice but to do so. That's no surprise: Rouhanifard was never qualified to actually run a school system. If, however, you want to dismantle a district, Paymon is clearly your guy.

Chris Christie: "Paymon has a proven track record..."

ADDING: Owen Davis reminds us that ALL of the federal money disbursed so far for school construction financing in New Jersey has gone to charter schools:

When a charter school moves into a new building, it's not unusual to see millions of dollars poured into renovations ranging from structural repairs to slick paint jobs. In the case of a school like Hawthorne [Newark Public Schools], plugging the leaky ceilings and safeguarding against mold would likely be top priorities.

The 2009 federal stimulus authorized states to allocate $22 billion in qualified school construction bonds (QSCBs), which allow cash-strapped schools to secure interest-free bond financing. Banks that finance school construction receive subsidies from the feds equivalent to some benchmark interest rate around 5 percent. Banks can pull in a tidy profit, as can the motley cast of counsels and intermediaries who ink the deals.

Of the $440 million in QSCBs New Jersey received, nearly three-quarters have been approved - and so far, every penny has gone to charters. TEAM Academy alone gobbled up $138 million. This exclusive allocation of QSCBs to charter schools is highly unusual. California and Texas, for comparison, each allocated less than one-fifth of their QSCBs to charter schools. 

To be sure, QSCBs aren't free money. Moreover, New Jersey charters "receive no facilities aid whatsoever," says Rick Pressler of the New Jersey Charter Schools Association. Accordingly, they have to be "very creative about how they're going to finance their facilities."

And creative they've been. Newark charters have become "infamous for being able to leverage their bonds to flip buildings," says Wyatt, and some of the city's most contested charter projects have been buoyed by QSCBs. When NPS sold 18th Avenue School, a district school it had just closed, to TEAM Academy, the charter used $40 million in QSCBs to finance it. [emphasis mine]

Rouhanifard is right: CCSD can't finance school reconstruction the way charters can -- because the game is rigged in the charters' favor.

ADDING MORE: One more note from the past:

The intervention proposal, which was obtained by the Courier-Post, was written by Department of Education employee Bing Howell. 

He did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment. 

Howell serves as a liaison to Camden for the creation of four Urban Hope Act charter schools. He reports directly to the deputy commissioner of education, Andy Smerick [sic].

Howell’s proposal suggests that he oversee the intervention through portfolio management — providing a range of school options with the state, not the district, overseeing the options. He would be assisted by Rochelle Sinclair, another DOE employee. Both Howell and Sinclair are fellows of the Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation. [emphasis mine]

Andy is a big proponent of "relinquishment," a fancy word meaning "destroying local school systems run by democratically elected school boards."

He's also one of the few people to ever block me on Twitter. Golly, wonder why...


* Maybe I'm just an old fart, but it really bugs me that the state-appointed superintendent of one of the largest districts in New Jersey thinks it's perfectly fine to address the parents of his city like he's a waiter at Applebee's. Calling parents "guys" is exactly the sort of amateurish and unintentionally (?) disrespectful language that makes me think Rouhanifard is way out of his depth.

New York's Absurd Debate About Teacher Evaluations & Test Scores

From this side of the Hudson, the controversy in New York this week over test scores and teacher evaluations makes New Jersey's education policy debates look relatively sane.

And that's no small trick.

Of course, there was already plenty to hate about New York's teacher evaluation system, APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review) before Angry Andy Cuomo got his way and imposed changes that make a bad system even worse.

APPR, like New Jersey's AchieveNJ, is predicated on the idea that the educator -- and only the educator -- is responsible for the "growth" of his or her students. It ignores the impacts of funding inequities or district-level curriculum decisions or inadequate facilities or non-random assignment of students or any of the many factors that impact student learning that are completely out of the control of teachers and/or principals.

In New Jersey, the test-based components of AchieveNJ also ignore student characteristics, even though SGPs -- Student Growth Percentiles, the test-based measures of student achievement used in teacher evaluations -- are clearly biased against teachers who work in high-poverty, low-resourced schools.

New York's growth model at least attempts to account for differences in student characteristics. According to the state's Technical Report, the bias against teachers and schools serving high-needs students has been significantly reduced compared to earlier versions of the model.

But that doesn't make New York's growth measures any less statistically noisy or invalid. According to the Technical Report, one-third of New York's teachers changed ratings from 2012-13 to 2013-14 (p. 43). The report crows that this is relatively stable compared to other growth measures, but in reality, it only means that the measures are merely the best of the worst.

Think about it: does it make any sense whatsoever that a full one-third of New York's teachers significantly changed in their "effectiveness" within the span of a year? Should a high-stakes decision be compelled by a measure that is this unstable?

Furthermore:

Here are the Technical Report's growth ratings for teachers in "tested grades" over the last two years. If we add together all of the teachers who had at least two consecutive "Developing" or "Ineffective" ratings, we are only dealing with the bottom 5 percent of the teaching corps.

I know that the reformy line is these 5 percent are keeping us from competing with Singapore and Finland, but let's get real: this small number is not worth Angry Andy's disproportionate response. Yes, we need to remove bad teachers from classrooms, but does anyone really think the vast majority of these teachers couldn't be identified through their classroom practices?

Angry Andy doesn't think so; he is convinced that large numbers of administrators are, for reasons known only to Andy, fudging their observations so they can retain poor teachers. That's why Andy wants to impose a huge unfunded mandate on school districts and require them to bring in outside observers to evaluate teachers.

It never occurs to Angry Andy that it may be possible administrators retain less-than-optimal teachers simply because there are not enough qualified candidates standing ready to replace them. Angry Andy has actually helped to create this situation in his own state, imposing "financially crippling" exams on teacher candidates (more on this later).

Even more foolishly, Angry Andy Cuomo thinks his demonization of teachers won't have an effect on the number of bright young people willing to enter the profession. He believes his own inability to properly fund New York's schools has no effect on the quality of teachers; no, it must be all these deceitful, lazy administrators, handing out phony high marks to lazy, ineffective teachers.

The outside observer policy and the increase in importance of test-based measures are both indications of how little faith Cuomo has in the teaching profession to regulate itself. The "proof" he puts forward to justify this claim is that too many children don't show proficiency on standardized tests. Of course, the game is rigged in New York (and everywhere else), and the number of children who are "proficient" is determined by a largely arbitrary process that has been manipulated time and again in Angry Andy's state.

But even if we leave that aside: where is Angry Andy's own accountability in the performance of New York's children on state tests? The state itself has enshrined in law the amount of resources necessary for students to achieve proficiency. This law was the result of a carefully researched process, years in the making, which determined how much money schools need to be able to provide their students with an adequate education.

But, as Bruce Baker says:

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

Then, they simply failed to fund it. [emphasis mine]

As the Education Law Center notes, New York State is now approaching an $8 billion cumulative shortfall in the funding the state itself says is necessary to provide an adequate education for New York's students. But Angry Andy does not care: he demands that teachers step up and educate all of New York's students, even if they don't have the money the state itself says is needed to do their jobs.

It is cynical beyond belief for Angry Andy Cuomo to hold teachers solely accountable for the progress of New York's deserving students when he won't do his damn job and give schools the money the state itself says they need to be effective.

This state of affairs, however, is the last thing Angry Andy -- or his Wall Street patrons -- want to talk about. New York, consequently, is now engaged in an absurd debate about what percentage of a teacher's evaluation should be based on test scores -- as if this is the central issue in the state's education policies, and not the lack of funding the state itself says is needed for its schools.

We had this same debate over percentages in New Jersey last year. Chris Christie, on the basis of nothing more than his feelings, decided that tests will account for 10 percent of a teacher's evaluation this year, and 20 percent next year. There is absolutely no evidence to support these percentages; they are completely arbitrary. But at least Christie's percentages have an effect on how the evaluations turn out (even if the evaluation system itself is unforgivably innumerate).

In New York, however, any debate about the percentages is pointless. As Carol Burris, America's Principal™, points out, the new APPR system compels decisions based on tests that have nothing to do with percentages:

If a teacher is "Highly Effective" on their observation but "Ineffective" on their growth measure, they get an overall rating of "Developing." Percentages have nothing to do with it; it is what it is. You could say that tests account for 1 percent of a teacher's evaluation or 99 percent -- it doesn't matter.

Now, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch is trying to make the case that there is flexibility in weighting the test scores. But if that's true, it completely negates the point of the table above. Cuomo himself said that he wants 50 percent, which is, de facto, what the table proposes. But you can't have it both ways: either there is flexibility in the weighing, or the table above stands. There's no middle ground here.

What's truly disappointing is watching UFT President Mike Mulgrew's apparent acquiescence to all this. "Punchy" Mike swears the NYC Teachers Union has "won":

“It’s not 50 percent test scores,” Mulgrew said. “It’s not a victory for [Cuomo] at all.”

Please. This is a huge victory for Angry Andy, if only because he has turned the conversation away from his own failures and toward a meaningless debate about how test-based measures should be weighted in a teachers evaluation. Mulgrew has played right into Cuomo's hands by arguing about percentages; NYC's teachers will pay the price.

The better response is that of NYSUT's (the statewide teachers union) president, Karen Magee:

“New York State United Teachers president Karen Magee hinted on Monday that the powerful statewide union would launch a campaign to further encourage parents to have their children “opt out” of state-administered, Common Core-aligned exams in order to undermine the use of test scores as a component of teacher evaluations.

Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Magee said the union has posted information on its website instructing parents on how to have their children refuse the third through eighth grade English and math exams, which are required by the federal government and will be administered next month.

“I’m a parent,” said Magee, who lives in Westchester. “My child is in 11th grade at this point in time. Had he been a third to eighth grader, he would not be taking the test. The tests are not valid indicators. The American Statistical Association has said there is no direct link to tie these tests to student performance or teacher evaluation. Let’s look at tests that are diagnostic in nature, that actually inform practice in the classroom, that actually work to serve students who are directly sitting in front of the teacher for the year as opposed to what we have in place right now.

“At this point in time, yes, we are encouraging parents to opt out,” she said. “We will be taking further steps to make parents aware of this…..”

“Magee admitted that some level of opt outs could hurt teachers in this way, but said, “Statistically, if you take out enough, it has no merit or value whatsoever.”

“When asked whether it was her goal to impact the validity of the exams, the union president responded: “At this point in time it’s the best way to go.” [emphasis mine]

Let's be clear: the New York State growth measures are already invalid, because they measure changes in student test scores, and not teacher effectiveness. Opting out will certainly affect the tests' validity as measures of student growth; however, that growth was never a valid measure of a teacher's abilities to begin with. We should never forget that the entire premise of test-based teacher evaluations is fundamentally flawed.

Still, Magee is right to start bringing the teachers unions directly into the opt out movement. The more monkey wrenches that are thrown into the machine, the better -- and not just for teachers.

I saw some preliminary research this week at Rutgers Graduate School of Education on how test-based accountability is affecting instruction. It confirms what we already know: high-stakes testing is changing how schools educate children, and not for the better. Teachers and their unions have an ethical obligation to stand up to increasingly expansive testing regimes, imposed for purely political reasons, to protect not just themselves but also their students.

Angry Andy Cuomo is not charging ahead with the expansion of high-stakes testing because he is the one true advocate for children in New York. His motive is transparently obvious: he does not want to be held accountable for his own failure to fully fund New York's schools. Teachers and their unions -- along with parents, students, lawmakers, and all stakeholders in New York's school system -- shouldn't go along with his destructive plans.

Furthermore, New York's teachers unions shouldn't play Andy's game and engage in a meaningless debate about percentages.  There are much bigger concerns here than whether UFT can claim a pyrrhic victory about how much tests count toward a teacher's evaluation.

Forest from the trees, fellas...

America's Angriest Governor

Five Years of Jersey Jazzman! Thursday Throwback: The New Segregation in the New Newark

Celebrating five years of blogging this week. This isn't my best written piece, nor the most followed, nor the most insightful. But it remains one of my personal favorites.

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(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.

Five Years of Jersey Jazzman! Wednesday Throwback: How the NJ Press Failed Us on Christie & Pensions

One of the most important functions of bloggers is to keep the mainstream press on their toes. Unfortunately, while there are good reporters working the education beat, both in New Jersey and around the nation, too often the narrative about education policy features "experts" who have no idea what they are talking about.

I've been particularly frustrated over the years with the pundits, opinion makers, and news reporters who have given Chris Christie a free ride (and, for their efforts, managed to procure literal free rides for themselves). One of the most egregious examples -- and one that is particularly relevant today -- is how the press let Christie get away with claiming he "saved" New Jersey's public employee pensions.

Of course, he did no such thing. Some of us pointed this out in real time; however, during the last election, when it mattered, it was clear that the press had no interest whatsoever in holding Christie accountable on this critical issue.

This post from May of 2014 recalls the New Jersey news media's utter failure to serve the public by simply demanding to know how Chris Christie was going to pay for his pension plans. Ladies and gentlemen of the press, you have got to start doing better.

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If you are at all shocked by this, you just haven't been paying attention:

In a stunning reversal, Gov. Chris Christie today announced plans to grab, over two years, $2.43 billion meant for public workers' pensions to balance New Jersey's ailing state budget. 

The plan threatens to derail one of Christie's signature accomplishments in Trenton — a series of reforms to replenish New Jersey's strained pension fund over the long term — but it would solve an immediate crisis for the governor, who has to find $2 billion somewhere to cover budget shortfalls for the current and incoming fiscal years. 

At a Statehouse news conference today, the Republican governor said his plan is to take $2.43 billion budgeted for the pension fund during this fiscal year and the next one. He ruled out alternatives such as raising the state income tax or cutting funds for schools and Medicaid. 

A payment to the pension fund scheduled to be made before June 30 will be reduced — from $1.6 billion to $696 million — via executive order, Christie said. 

To all my fellow public employees who voted for Chris Christie: I hope you're happy. This clown broke an explicit promise to you, and now he wants to take money out of your pocket and put your pension at risk. But, hey, he was such a straight shooter back in 2013, dontchaknow! And you just loved his no-nonsense style! Plus, he was with you on marriage equity/guns/abortion/insert-your-favorite-conservative-social-wedge-issue-here...

Honest people can debate any of those social issues. But I've never understood how a public employee could think any of them are more important than being able to take care of yourself and your family.

Of course, back in 2011, when Christie - abetted by his Democratic allies in the legislature -- forced us to pay more into our pensions on the promise the state would start meeting its obligations, he told us that he was "fixing these systems in order to save them." Plenty of suckers appeared to believe this; only snarky teacher-bloggers, it seemed, bothered to point out that Christie had never put forth a plan to raise the revenue his legislation required. Over and over, the warning signs were there: without additional revenue, the payments required by Christie's law -- the one he constantly touted across the country -- would not be made.

Flash forward to 2013 and the gubernatorial race: Christie still had not told us how he was going to come up with in excess of $5 billion by 2018. He refused to raise taxes on corporations or the wealthy, both of whom had making out like bandits under New Jersey's regressive tax regime:

This was Christie's signature legislation; his shining, bipartisan moment... but he still hadn't let us in on the plan. You would think someone -- anyone -- would ask him about this.

No one did.

Don't believe me? Here are the two debates from 2013 between Christie and his challenger, Barbara Buono. Number one:

And number two:



There were lots of serious questions about serious issues asked in the debates: marriage equity, minimum wage, gun control, property taxes, etc. There were also plenty of questions about issues that I think are far less important: Christie's political ambitions, the Christiecrats who endorsed the incumbent over Buono, Wawa vs. 7-11 (seriously), etc.

But pension underfunding cuts right to the heart of the fiscal health of New Jersey. If anyone cared one whit about whether New Jersey would weather its budget crisis, they had to be concerned about the pensions. Why didn't anyone bother to ask about the pension payments?

To be fair: Barbara Buono, who I like and respect, never bothered to ask Christie about this either. I suppose she avoided the question because she figured she'd have to admit that she would have to raise taxes to make the payments. From my perspective, she would have been better off doing just that... but that is, admittedly, Monday morning quarterbacking.

In any case, the press didn't need for Buono to bring up pensions; they could have addressed the issue themselves. Unfortunately, the editorial boards of the state's newspapers utterly failed in their obligation to get an answer from Christie on this most basic of questions.

For example: when Tom Moran, chief of the Star-Ledger's editorial board, famously published his mea culpa for the paper's endorsement of Christie, he couldn't bring himself to address the problem of the pension payments:

But there is more to it. Christie has made good progress on education with a focus on struggling cities, especially Newark and Camden. His pension and health reforms helped contain public costs that were spiraling out of control. [emphasis mine]

Dear lord, what an obtuse statement. There is no cost containment without the state making its payments -- and Christie never told us how he would make them. The S-L's original endorsement worried that Christie hadn't come up with the funds to pay for open space purchase and transit projects. But any worry about the pension payments? Nope: the pension bill was "important." Unfounded, but "important."

Let's be fair: the Ledger wasn't alone. The Philadelphia Inquirer said Christie put "pension funding on a better track." The Asbury Park Press editorial board said: "Public employee pension and health benefits have been reined in, with the largest impact on taxpayers still to be felt." The Bergen Record editorial board didn't even mention pension payments in their endorsement.

The Atlantic City Press, in their endorsement of Christie, proclaimed: "Whether those reforms succeed in shoring up the pension system will depend on the huge payments they require in future budgets, but this legislation, pushed strenuously by Christie, is a step in the right direction." But how could there be a "step" without a payment plan? Did it occur to the paper's editorial board to ask what the plan was?

Please.

Pension payments are the central fiscal issue in New Jersey, but not one editorial board in the state bothered to address it in the last gubernatorial election.

And so now here we are: Chris Christie has reneged on his promises, the state's bond rating is now in free fall, and we are no closer to pension"reform" than we were four years ago.

I want to be clear: there are some very good reporters in the state doing some very good work. But on pension payments, the punditocracy of New Jersey utterly failed their readers and viewers. What happens next is as much on their heads as anyone else's.

NJ's Editorial Boards take a stand on pension payments...