This is a “Three posts for the price of one” special. Read them all, mix and match, your call. Here’s the short version of the three topics.
• The Network For Public Education released an education privatization report card, the more school privatization, the lower the grade. Arizona earned an F, along with 16 other states. Arizona’s is the lowest F of the lot.
• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sunk over $200 million into an multi-year experiment looking at ways to improve teacher effectiveness. Its own analysis indicates it didn’t work.
• Trump’s Ed Sec Betsy DeVos’s family has a stake worth between $5 million and $25 million in an education company which the National Advertising Review Board accused of making questionable claims about its ability to help with problems related to autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression.
Here are the details.
Arizona Earns an F:
The study calls itself A Report Card on Our Nation’s Commitment to Public Schools. The more a state favors education privatization, the lower the grade. Arizona earns its lowest-in-the-country F by having the nation’s largest ESA program (Education Savings Accounts, aka Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, aka Vouchers on Steroids) along with the worst ESA accountability system, and a Tuition Tax-Credit Program with one of the nation’s highest eligibility rates and the worst accountability systems. Arizona is one of only four states which allows for-profit charter schools to operate, though many charter schools in most states use for-profit charter management companies.
Put those all together, and Arizona ranks significantly lower than the other bottom dwellers: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada. Three states earn an A+ for their commitment to public schools — Nebraska, North Dakota and West Virginia — followed closely by South Dakota, Kentucky and Wyoming.
As with all studies and scorecards of this kind, it’s important to know the focus and bias of the groups which created the study. The Network for Public Education is an organization started by education historian Diane Ravitch and others which takes a strong stand for public education and against privatization/”education reform.” (Full disclosure: I agree with NPE’s stands in general though not in all the particulars, and I know some of the people involved in the group’s leadership.) The study was done in cooperation with the Schott Foundation for Public Education, a group I know less about. It supports, according to its mission statement, “fully resourced, quality PreK-12 public education.”
Merit Pay Fails:
Actually, this is about more than merit pay. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sunk over $200 million into a six year project to find ways to make teachers more effective. The school districts and charter schools involved had to match the Gates money. Total cost: $575 million.
The half billion dollar investment was basically a bust. The carrots and sticks of merit pay for growth in student achievement and intense teacher observation and evaluation systems yielded negligible results. Student achievement didn’t budge relative to schools which didn’t have the grant money, and teacher effectiveness didn’t change noticeably.
“The initiative itself tried to pull a bunch of levers to have a big impact on student performance,” said Brian Stecher, a RAND researcher and the lead author of the report. “The sites did in fact modify all of these levers, some more than others, but in the end, there were no big payoffs in terms of improved graduation [rates] or achievement of students in general, and low-income and minority students in particular.”
The Gates Foundation looked at the data and decided, maybe the path to improving student achievement needs to go through the students, not the teachers. So the foundation is now looking at early childhood education, family support, health and nutrition to see what impact they have on the way students learn and succeed in school.
DeVos-Backed Company Caught Lying:
The advertising for the company Neurocore claims that its “neurofeedback” programs help treat autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression in children and adults. The problem is, the company’s claims aren’t supported by any reliable data, so the Advertising Self-Regulatory Council demanded that they stop making their extravagant claims of success.
Officially launched in 2006, Neurocore operates a half-dozen “brain-performance” centers in Michigan and Florida. It claims to treat both adults and children by analyzing their brainwaves and other biological signs, then providing “neurofeedback sessions” through which they can train their brains to function better. A 30-session cycle can cost as much as $2,200.
The DeVos family are believers, though whether they believe in the effectiveness of the company’s treatment or its moneymaking potential isn’t clear. Betsy DeVos served on the company’s board, leaving when she became Trump’s Secretary of Education. The family’s financial stake in the company is somewhere in the $5 million to $25 million range.
Apparently, our national Ed Sec’s devotion to the notion that anything is better than traditional public schooling extends to the use of untested, cool-sounding “neurofeedback” systems.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2018.
“….The half billion dollar investment was basically a bust. The carrots and sticks of merit pay for growth in student achievement and intense teacher observation and evaluation systems yielded negligible results. Student achievement didn’t budge relative to schools which didn’t have the grant money, and teacher effectiveness didn’t change noticeably….”
Faulty Model for Merit Pay Increases!!!
Merit pay Increases are based on Improvement in Student Achievement on Standardized Assessment Examinations via an Effective Classroom Instructional Program Developed and Implemented by Competent Dedicated Teachers!! It is NOT a “Carrots and Sticks” Game supported by Grant Monies!! The Merit Pay Salary Increases are a part of the Teachers Contract with the School District.
“….The Gates Foundation looked at the data and decided, maybe the path to improving student achievement needs to go through the students, not the teachers….”
Incredible!! Student Motivation is of No Value if not Supported by an Effective Classroom Instructional Program Developed and Implemented by Competent Dedicated Teachers as well as Parental/Guardian Support.
This Report and the Analysis of Merit Pay is Completely BOGUS!!!!
And how do we get Competent, Dedicated Teachers to develop Effective Classroom Instructional Programs and / or, a more basic problem we have here in Arizona before we can start worrying about raising student achievement: how do we get well educated, creative, and inspiring teachers to stay in the classroom and / or stay in the state?
Has the Gates Foundation experimented with increasing salary to compete with other professions requiring college degrees, increasing planning time, increasing stipends for university-delivered high quality professional development, decreasing regimentation and skill drills geared towards mindless multiple choice tests, decreasing class sizes? You will get better results from professional services delivered when you treat college-educated professionals like college-educated professionals, not like agents of a standardized, mind-numbingly boring, corporatized crap that passes for education in too many of our publicly funded schools.
As for a privatization report card, couldnt care less. What would be of more interest is a report card on quality of education delivered. And whether or not you and your friends want to touch on this fact in your propaganda-to-the-public, David, there is less valid education going on in public district settings than there used to be. The trends in methods are in the wrong direction, and this is aided and abetted by some of your pals in governance and excused or ignored by you. For a save public ed movement to be valid, public ed has to be EDUCATIONALLY and not just ideologically worth saving.
Make some progress with that and then get back to us with requests for policy initiatives like SOS that cut off access to high quality alternative schools. Or, yall could start advocating for improved oversight of public district schools, charters, AND privates. Either of those policy agendas would be would be more EDUCATIONALLY worthy than the policy crap that comes under the shrill and misleading rubric of ANTI-PRIVATIZATION!!!
I once asked Francis ” what time is it?” After telling me how to build a watch, he went on to explain the pros and cons of how time could be the 11th dimension.
Seems like the first two should read : Defenders of the status quo like the status quo. The first one is really silly. OF COURSE an organization that supports current public education would dig up data that the alternative sucks. But the fact remains that US global education achievement ranks somewhere in the mid 20’s in verbal skill and low 30’s in computational skills. Hard to say ” let’s keep doing what we’re doing”. The last one says that the Devos Foundation makes some bad investments from time to time. OK, got it.
They try to retrieve their lost monopoly on the use of public funds for education, and, in doing so, they increasingly defend a “status quo” that is bad and getting worse. Now we see large cohorts of democratic (and Democratic) citizens who choose not to operate within the constructive framework of public democratic processes and are quite willing to kick the norms of civilized behavior to the curb, “heckling” or “screaming at” or “ejecting” their political opponents in private venues:
“Progressives have heckled the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, and the White House aide Stephen Miller at Washington restaurants. They have ejected the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, from a Lexington, Va., eatery. And they have screamed at one of Mr. Trumps leading cable news surrogates, Floridas attorney general, Pam Bondi, at a Tampa movie theater. ‘Lets make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,’ Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, said Saturday at a rally in Los Angeles. And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them theyre not welcome anymore, anywhere.'”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/us/politics/trump-liberal-activists-shaming.html?emc=edit_th_180626&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=543725120626
As the midterms approach, it is good to know how much respect some of our elected representatives who belong to the “Defend Public Eduction!” party have for the constitutionally established structures and processes that created the offices they currently hold and that put them into these offices. It’s also instructive to see that our education systems have produced a good number of citizens who are vulnerable to the worst kind of demagoguery, on both the left and the right.
David Axelrod gets it right: “‘Its totally counterproductive,’ said David Axelrod, the former chief strategist for President Barack Obama. ‘Youre making Sarah Huckabee Sanders a sympathetic figure. Organize, run for office, donate and most of all vote,’ he said. ‘Thats how you change policy in a democracy.'”
But he is apparently a member of a dying breed in the Democratic / Demagogic party these days: “Mr. Axelrod […] received an avalanche of criticism online over the weekend after tweeting about his unease with how Ms. Sanders was treated.”
Recently Matthew Chingos of the Urban Institute did one of the most sophisticated rankings of state academic performance ever performed. He both measured academic gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress from 2013 4th grade to 2017 8th grade and he also took the 2017 8th grade data and adjusted it for the six demographic variables contained in the data collected by the NAEP.
Arizona finished in the top half of both measures which interestingly enough, were not correlated with each other. A fact which Chingos did no comment on.
When Chingos did his evaluation of 2015 NAEP sccores, he ranked Arizona 13th in the nation in adjusted scores and Arizona was number one in the nation in cohort gains (2011 4th grade to 2015 8th grade).
When you look internally at school districts with excellent management, Chandler Unified, Mesa Unified, Vail, etc., their internal measures of quality from the parent’s perspective, i.e. the percentage of parents rating the quality of their child’s school excellent, an “A” rating, or “Very Satisfied” are all well above 60%. Chandler is at 75%, up a couple of percentage points a year from 38% in 1998.
By comparison, the nation plunged from 36%, an all-time high in 2011 to 24%, essentially an all-time low in 2015. The plunge so horrified PhiDeltaKappa that they discontinued the 47 year survey, fracturing the only longitudinal data we have for quality from a parent’s perspective.
The data is even more striking for social indicators. In 1992, the year before school choice started in Arizona, their were 70 murders by juveniles with an at-risk population of less than 100,000 students. By 2012, this had fallen to 7 murders with an at-risk population of more than 400,000 students. Juvenile murder rates for the nation also went down, but nowhere as much as Arizona.
In 2017, Black 8th graders in Arizona scored number one in the nation in math, outscoring African Americans in all 49 other states, up from 6th in 2000. Arizona Asian Americans placed 5th, up from 11th in 2013.
Connecticut is the epitome of education culture, spending $22,000 per year per student. Our Black 8th graders don’t just outscore their Black 8th graders in math, they outscore them by a whole year and a half. Our Hispanics don’t just outscore them in 8th grade math, they outscore them by an entire year’s worth of progress. Our whites also outscore their white 8th graders.
What does Connecticut have to show for their $22,000? Since 2000, Connecticut has lost 14,000 jobs because of the tax load, while Arizona has added over 400,000 jobs.
The evidence is overwhelming, school choice has created enormous value for Arizona students.
The phrase “merit pay” is meaningless in education if you don’t talk about the specific design elements.
Merit pay can mean:
1) The principal decides how much to increase the pay of each teacher based on his perception of “performance.” Thus, teachers are pitted against each other in a negative interdependence- the opposite of a healthy work relationship.
2) The teachers can be rewarded for the test scores of their students in a doubly brainless relationship. They are pitted against their students and subject to random feedback of test scores which are primarily a function of family SES.
3. Teachers can be rewarded for the percentage of parents rating their school district and school “excellent” creating a positive interdependent relationship between teachers and between teachers and parents. Nationwide, only 24% of parents rate their child’s school excellent. Done right, this percentage can improve at 2 percentage points a year. Done perfectly, it can be improved at 7 percentile points a year.
4. Teachers can be rewarded for the academic gains of their school and school district. Done mildly and done in conjunction with a parent excellence measurement and done with strict controls of testing integrity, this can enhance the package.
5. Teachers can be subject to peer ratings, further enhancing the effectiveness of the package.
6. Student evaluations of school climate through the 7C’s or Gallup’s Hope Engagement and Well-being framework can be used to further enhance performance pay.
So, merit pay doesn’t have to fail. It just always has- everywhere except in Arizona.
I have got to agree. Thank God for private and charter schools. American children can be educated.
Any educational experiment that produces the teacher attrition and vacancy rates we have in Arizona is a failed experiment. Any educational experiment that has no effective form of oversight and no better measure of educational quality than standardized test scores (augmented or un-augmented by “satisfaction surveys” of parents who are not educators) is a failed experiment.
With a few notable exceptions that prove the rule, public district schools, charter schools, and private schools in Southern Arizona are more poorly governed, of lower educational quality, and more in need of time consuming and expensive parental supplementation and damage control than their counterparts elsewhere. And Southern Arizona Dems make the pervasive problems with quality of education worse by pretending that the problem is with the proliferation of charters and public funding for privates, not with the conspicuous mismanagement of the public district system that creates the refugees who flee to other types of schools. (You can continue to avoid acknowledging the massive diseased elephant that is farting in the middle of the room, Dems, but thousands and thousands of non-Koolaid drinkers who have had to use the education system you champion see the beast clearly and smell its stench.)
Any educational experiment that produces the teacher attrition and vacancy rates we have in Arizona is a failed experiment.”
No one has ever presented any study which shows teacher attrition rates to be higher in Arizona than in other states. The only study, a huge sample done out of ASU, of teacher job satisfaction did not show lower teacher job satisfaction in Arizona.
The people who started this chant used to work for me and I saw first hand the “evidence.” It was not evidence at all. Nationwide, the attrition rate for teachers (by attrition rate, I mean leaving the profession not leaving their school) has always been greater than 50% in the first five years. Arizona has a greater turnover rate than the national average because, in Arizona, unlike other states, teachers have choices of where to work, lots of choices. But, turnover isn’t attrition.
John, can you give us a link to the study you cite? I’d like to take a look at it.