What’s incredible is that the author doesn’t mention that due to the huge popular backlash to RTTT, Governors are pulling away from the Common Core, trying to de-emphasize high-stakes testing, and the new ESEA is likely to legally block the US Secretary from ever being able to incentivize states from adopting any of these policies again.
There is so much deception and spin in this article I don’t know where to begin. I’m a Stanford School of Education graduate who worked with real education reform in the 1990s, the Accelerated Schools Project started by former Stanford Prof. Hank Levin.
A quick response to some of the hype here, just looking at one sentence. It would take hours to go further. You wrote:
“The competition required applicants to address four key areas: standards and assessments, teachers and leaders, data, and turning around low-performing schools.”
Concerning “standards and assessments” - In reality, what happened is that your Common Core standards and assessments were put together in secrecy by people associated with testing (not learning), with a pedagogy out of the Cold War era (New Criticism) and little input from real teachers and education reform experts. You ignored research on child development, focused on high-stakes testing and rigid standards, which all the research has shown diminishes student motivation and learning.
With “teachers and leaders” - yes, the Department of Education helped put Broad Academy affiliated persons like yourself in leadership positions. You also “leveraged” states to introduce VAMs and teacher assessments which leading researchers and statisticians such as Stanford’s Prof. Edward Haertal have said do not have validity as measures. What the research actually shows is that teachers have a much smaller effect on learning then student SES. Poverty is what diminishes learning, not “bad” teachers.
Yet, there was a witch hunt mentality shared with the media, a demonization of the profession, beginning with the President himself, saying that “bad” teachers would be located (with new assessment strategies) and terminated. Since 2008, we have seen a drop in moral among teachers as a result.
True, you focused on collecting data and testing, but you ignored all the research on effective whole school reform and student learning! This has led to something close to sabotage in many schools across the nation. This is what created the Opt Out movement and has caused so much distress for millions.
Finally, you say your intention was to “turn around” low performing schools. Is that what happened in Chicago, Philadelphia and other urban cities? Low performing public schools where not turned around, (as projects like the Accelerated Schools, Deborah Meier’s Mission Hill Schools and James Comer’s program at Yale were designed to do), they were shut down, with profit-making charters opened in their place.
Which was your intention from the very beginning. That’s the big deception here. The plan was laid out in this DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) document from 2012.
The goal was to use President Obama as a “cover” so that you could bypass the teacher’s unions and expand the numbers of charter schools. Broad Academy linked people like yourself did that by targeting the schools of the poorest American communities, with the intention of shutting them down, not turning them around.
Anyone who goes to your former employer New Schools Venture Fund can read more of the plan there, which is to very intentionally target the schools of the poorest and most disenfranchised Americans, shutting them down. Closing their doors, sending the kids on buses elsewhere and opening new charter schools.
Your “reform” approach was set up to take over, manipulate and sabotage American education. Anyone who goes to the source documents of DFER and New Schools Venture can see that it was all intentionally designed to work this way, not as you spin it.
The Dept. of Education constantly talks about evidence-based reforms. Have you actually read the research on learner-centered school reforms and the dangers of high-stakes testing? I have. Decades of slow and careful research have shown that data and testing are meaningless and can even be harmful if not collected and implemented wisely. By cutting teachers and education experts (such as Stanford Prof. Linda Darling-Hammond) out of the formulation of your policies and seeking to “leverage” change you put in place one of the most destructive education policies in recent U.S. history.
Christopher Chase, Ph.D.
Professor, English Language Studies
Seinan Gakuin University
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars being used on a poorly designed experiment was a horrible waste of tax dollars at a time when schools – ACROSS THE COUNTRY – needed real help.
Let me try to explain because clearly you people don’t get it.
First, you set the rules. Then you say winners were picked that “had outstanding ideas for improving educational outcomes.” You forgot the part about how they had to be in lock step with what you leaders already decided. Then, you all thought it was a good idea to pick winners that “were also in a strong position to implement those ideas.”————That is where all logical thinking about real reform (improving those schools that aren’t “strong”) is dead in the water. Do you wonder why historically we never succeed in “scaling-up” ideas that “work” in states that already have good outcomes? Think about it.
Competitive grants? What a horrible way to do the business of educating all children!
THIS confession is astounding: “First, we forced alignment among the top three education leaders in each participating state—the governor, the chief state school officer, and the president of the state board of education—by requiring each of them to sign their state’s Race to the Top application. In doing so, they attested that their office fully supported the state’s reform proposal. “
How distrubing that the federal government would “promote approaches to education reform that would be coherent, systemic, and statewide” when there are laws prohibiting the US Dept of Ed from directing local education. RTTT, taxpayer money, could have, SHOULD have been used to help struggling schools in a time of “profound budgetary challenge for state governments”, instead you chose this as an opportunity. “A perfect storm for reform,” with no teacher or parent approval necessary or invited involvement. Many of those on your “panel of independent education experts” refused to sign off on this rushed RTTT “induced” experiment. You have used our children as your guinea pigs, testing out common standards, and data driven instruction. You have changed laws to allow the taking and sharing of children’s personal data and have been backed by billions of edtech dollars, because they stand to make even more money from our children’s data and from the busines that is now education. The title of this piece is fitting. The principles competing here are right and wrong. Clearly, you have not raced to the top of anything but greed and abuse of power. It’s no wonder the nation is denouncing the RTTT common core reform and its ” four key areas.”
Excellent observations Cheri and Victoria. Make sure you keep a copy of your responses. I doubt very much that Ms. Weiss is going to wan to to allow our responses to remain public. The Department of Education never sought criticism or critical input from teachers or successful researchers in the field. Their talk of transparency, accountability and encouraging “critical thinking skills” has been a con game from the start. Hopefully, the folks at the Stanford Social Innovation Review will allow our voices to be heard.
Leonie Haimson and Christopher Chase reveal the spin and deception in this self-promoting piece by a CCSS insider. Thanks for clarifying what really happened with CCSS.
Leonie, Christopher, Victoria and Cheryl - you correctly provide what are disturbing revelations to the decline in public education; those notice the Journal title “Stanford Social Innovation Review, with ” SOCIAL INNOVATION” in caps. It is not about education, in which it has failed; it has not helped our children socially either, I’m afraid. Failure on both levels, and has cost our children years of education, and the public billions of dollars—not ARRA funds - the US taxpayer’s money.
Leonie Haimson said: “The National Academy of Sciences warned that RTTT was imposing a non-evidenced based teacher evaluation system, and yet the powers that be including Ms. Weiss didn’t care. “
Excellent point.
And as Cheri Kiesecker pointed out, this really is quite an amazing confession given that it’s against the law for the Federal Government to force national policy on education.
“We forced alignment among the top three education leaders in each participating state—the governor, the chief state school officer, and the president of the state board of education—by requiring each of them to sign their state’s Race to the Top application. In doing so, they attested that their office fully supported the state’s reform proposal”
In the section on Transparency Ms. Weiss wrote that: “participants developed a common vocabulary for talking about education reform and a shared understanding of what “high-quality” reform efforts look like.”
Given that you ignored the input of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as leading experts and researchers working with actual effective education reform, how can you say this? It’s a fabrication of truth.
You developed a con artist vocabulary, that was NOT evidence or research based. You brought in a business plan for leveraging a nation’s entire education system, like it was some kind of Wall Street corporate takeover.
Transparency? We’ve had to do a lot of digging to figure out that this hijacking of public education was engineered by billionaires posing as “Philanthropreneurs.”
I actually couldn’t finish reading the whole article, because I began to become physically ill thinking about the life-altering changes that NCLB & RttT have created for my students. The over emphasis on high stakes testing has stripped them of everything that kids used to enjoy in school: music, art, physical education, and even recess. Students who may not perform well on tests because of their life circumstances, that they did not ask for, or bring upon themselves, are pushed out of schools, and eventually give up, often feeding the school-to-prison pipeline. The pressure on kids to perform well on tests because their school, teacher, district, and city are counting on them is akin to abuse. No child should feel that level of responsibility.
Meanwhile, the educator “accountability system” based on test scores is a farce. Every statistician in the country recognizes that the only valid causal connection shown through standardized test scores is socioeconomic status.
I find it embarrassing that there are people in this country, who may consider themselves highly educated, that believe that competition for funding public education is moral or appropriate. It is reprehensible that we live in a country that perpetuates a system of segregation through inadequate and inequitable school funding in the 21st century. Appropriately funding education in America is fundamental to our democracy. Concluding that competition for public education dollars has been beneficial for our children, especially our most vulnerable young citizens, is like concluding that competition among children to gain their family’s love is healthy. It’s absurd. All children deserve to be loved, nurtured, and have their needs met. All children deserve equal opportunity and access to a quality education, in a system that respects educators and values community schools.
Since I didn’t have the fortitude to finish reading the article, I can only hope that the author eventually expressed a rational and humanitarian view that denounced treating children like products before the article concluded.
At one point in the article we are told that reforms should be coherent, systemic, and statewide. That’s nice. But what happens when the reforms have those qualities but they have the additional quality of being bad. Bad, coherent, systemic, and statewide reforms are still bad. In fact, they do the most damage because they are systemic and statewide. Instead of experimenting on just some children, they experiment on all of them. And when the experiment goes bad, as is happening with our 20 year experiment with excessive, high-stakes testing, the reformers will say “Oh, well,” and move on to their next big idea to experiment on students with. Meanwhile, real educators will have to pick up the pieces of their “creative destruction” and try to make students whole again. What fun.
Can I just say that I’m delighted to read these comments, which are well-informed, spot-on, and unanimous in their disapproval.
Peter Greene has a great take-down of this too at curmudgucation.blogspot.com.
Amazing job writing a piece of this length that avoided using COMMON CORE a single time, yet admits RTTT was used to make it happen.
Ms. Weiss was working for New Schools Venture Fund when she was tapped for DOE. NSVF was heavily backed by The Gates Foundation to push Common Core. This appointment was not coincidence, it was the beginning of a ground game. http://www.newschools.org/news/joanne-weiss-appointment
go to Pioneer Institute (BOSTON) and see why former commissioner Robert Scott Texas did not fall into the trap of requesting the RTT funding from Arne Duncan… Also, go go Art of Teaching by Jack Hassard and look up what was wrong with the applications the states submitted (and how the governors signed off on lies in order to get the funds)...
look up how other federal policies have “failed”… for example “SIG” Andy Smarick at Fordham Institute writes this one (I point him out, I cannot recommend anything he does) … ask look up what “Reading First” failed as a national policy (granted in some states they did some good things but overall the evaluations of Reading First were not good. Do you see any parallels across these three funding cycles ????? I do… I don’t have time to educate you on all the things that are wrong with the Weiss “puff piece”, Instead I have to work on why Melody Sloan another of Duncan’s lackey’s is destroying the special education intent that we worked so hard on in Massachusetts with Chapter 766 which preceded the 94.142 IDEA…. can you tell I am angry?
this is a very boastful article; instead of patting herself on the back, Ms. Weiss should be aware that there have been dissenters from the very beginning of this federal policy. here are some examples…Jack Hassard: A Skeptical Look at Science Standards - Blogs
blogs.edweek.org/.../jack_hassard_a_skeptical_look.htm…
Education Week
Mar 5, 2012 - Authoritative demands were issued by the US Department of Education in its Race to the Top Fund insisting that if states did not adopt the ...
Race to the Top Results are In: 16 Winners, More than 300 ...
nepc.colorado.edu/.../race-top-results-ar…
National Education Policy Center
Dec 21, 2012 - Jack Hassard ... The Race to the Top continues with the announcement that 16 educational organizations ... Panels reading the top 61 applications came to DC for the week of November 26 to make the final cut to 16. Winners.
Instead of School’s Industrial Culture, Students Need the ... http://www.artofteachingscience.org/instead-of-schools-industrial-culture-stude...
by Jack Hassard on January 22, 2014 7 Comments ... Freedom to learn has many interpretations and applications. The word cloud that is shown in Figure 1 is ...
29 - The Art of Teaching Science http://www.artofteachingscience.org/page/30/?pu003d113
by Jack Hassard on November 4, 2013 Leave a Comment ... The State Charter School Commission ruled on the 16 applications it received from charter ... Thanks to the Race to the Top Fund, the race is on to implement a system to score ...
The Simplest and Most Obvious Incontrovertible Reason to ...
educationalchemy.com/.../the-simplest-and-most-obvious-incontrovertibl…
Nov 27, 2014 - ... Times · The Art of Teaching Science: Jack Hassard · The fight for Indiana .... and techniques and to modernize their procedures and applications — at ... products foisted upon states called Race to the Top funding runs out, ...
Did Atlanta Educators Get Equal Justice Before the Law ...
dianeravitch.net/2015/04/06/atlanta-cheating-scandal/
Apr 6, 2015 - ... to customers, claim to have lost loan modification applications when they actually shredded them, .... this is Jack Hassard’s blog on the topic ...
even if you swallow her boastful attitude whole, I must point out that Ms. Weiss knows nothing about the solid years of the change models over the decades. Some people have never heard of Seymour Sarason, know nothing of the work of Goodlad and Anderson etc… but I must call her out on not understanding the diffusion and dissemination models that were originally part of the NIE… and the exchange models that were in place during the formation of the Labs and Centrs; unfortunately, all of that good research and the work of U. Michigan (Havelock) and others in the understanding of social theory and change. Why doesn’t Stanford cover any of that instead of this “puff piece” to build her career ladder?
it’s Sunday morning and I shouldn’t be this angry; but Ms. weiss seems to my opinion to be a dilettante….. Here is another major researcher who knows something about consequential validity … when these feds propose a shoddy impleentaton strategy it makes me exceedingly angry.Addressing the impact of poverty on student achievement ... https://www.ednc.org/.../addressing-impact-poverty-student-achievement
Release of the first letter grades for North Carolina public schools on February 5 ... in terms of future school achievement but non ... Ladd is Susan B. King ...
[PDF]The Impacts of Charter Schools on Student …
nepc.colorado.edu/files/EPRU-0412-76-OWI[1].pdf
THE IMPACTS OF CHARTER SCHOOLS ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: EVIDENCE FROM NORTH CAROLINA ... Evidence From North Carolina Author: Helen F. Ladd, …
Ladd and Fiske: If North Carolina Wants to Improve ...
dianeravitch.net/2015/02/20/ladd-and-fiske-if-north-carolina-wants…
Feb 20, 2015 · Ladd and Fiske: If North Carolina Wants to Improve Achievement, It Must Address ... is that the relationship between poverty and low school achievement ...
[PDF]Charter Schools in North Carolina - Vanderbilt University http://www.vanderbilt.edu/schoolchoice/conference_08/papers/Ladd-Bifulco...
Table 8: Impacts of North Carolina Charter Schools on Achievement Gains, by Student’s ... Charter Schools in North Carolina Author: Helen Ladd and Robert Bifulco
The Impacts of Charter Schools on Student Achievement ...
eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ902821
The Impacts of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from North Carolina. ... Ladd , Helen F. Education Finance and Policy, v1 n1 p50 ... smaller ...
Like you, Melissa, I had a hard time reading through to the end, but came back several times to do so. Weiss’ take on what has occurred in public education is so far from the on the ground reality that I felt as if I were in a parallel universe.
Here’s the true confessions section which most overwhelmed me:
“...we requested (but did not require) the inclusion of signatures by three district officials—the superintendent, the school board president, and the leader of the relevant teachers’ union or teachers’ association—on each district-level MOU. This approach, among other benefits, gave unions standing in the application process without giving them veto power over it…we imposed an eligibility requirement. A state could not enter the competition if it had laws on the books that prohibited linking the evaluation of teachers and principals to the performance of their students. Several states changed their laws in order to earn the right to compete.” Translation: let’s cut teachers and principals out of the equation; they’ll just be in the way.
Weiss’ laudatory characterization of this kind of fiscal arm-twisting to achieve her goals demonstrates a reformista attitude which Jitu Brown has rebutted in recent days - “You’re not better than us, you’re not smarter than us, you don’t love these kids more than we do.” The comments section reflects that the low regard in which Arne Duncan’s DOE holds the American classroom teacher, like so much of DOE policy, is not based on reality.
I served with Joanne Weiss and can affirm that Race to the Top helped spur more needed change in four years than the previous five decades of reform: higher standards, teacher evaluation, robust interventions in low-performing schools and the use of data to drive decisions. Obviously, many of the people writing comments disagree though none of them offer a responsible, practical, scalable way of protecting children at risk and fostering improvements in public education. Joanne’s closing line not only captures the animating spirit of RTT but the hostile and irrational pushback to reform that is reflected in the comments: “Rapid change is possible—even in a traditionally change-resistant field.” Thanks Joanne.
I agree with Leonie and Christopher, but I’ll add that RTTT made some basic philosophical mistakes:
1- VAM metrics have not proven valid or reliable for measuring teacher quality because it uses sports betting methodology that assumes teacher proficiency is measured by how much money students go on to make as adults
2 - dangling money to incentivize politicians to change education policy is a perverse, corrupting incentive that is neither sustainable, nor sound educational practice that develops proven policy through piloting and long-term refining
3 - the federal government tramples the 10th Amendment to impose testing on the states, thereby influencing the curriculum, which is prohibited
4 - The premise that we mandate kids must reach performance benchmarks by a certain age ignore the science of child development and imposes punishments on teachers for factors beyond their control
5 - RTTT’s requirement ti tie teacher evaluations to test scores has ALEC roots and continues a disgraceful tradition of pay-for-play and revolving door politics
Wow, you can almost hear the grinding of axes in this comment thread. As with any sweeping and ambitious government initiatives, I’m sure there were compromises made in the planning and execution of RTTT. But at the end of the day, this was one of countless federal grant competitions, and if it led to more change than anticipated, then it’s a sign of the initiative of the governors and other local political leaders to use this scant bit of political cover to effect real policy shifts.
Meanwhile, I found this reflection by someone integrally involved in the process to be a really useful glimpse into the Dept’s process and the political psychology of dealing with different states.
Gordon, can you explain why high performing districts with high existing standards and proven track records over decades had to be changed?
Besides the points above, I still don’t understand the need to “standardize” student performance (by age, no less) when underlying resources are so unequal and un-standardized.
As such, the high performing districts in NY were upended, told to comply with arbitrary VAM evaluations, and losing precious learning time every year to tests and prep.
Why didn’t Weiss leave successful districts alone and concentrate support in struggling schools? Teachers don’t need state-supplied bubble tests to know who is struggling and in which areas, but the fact that NCLB kicked off by awarding George Bush’s brother a lucrative testing contract should have been a tip off. The transfer of public funds to private vendors is a net loss of resources and services for kids in classrooms, but the use of RTTT metrics to make major school decisions is a power grab away from the states into the hand of central planners at a time where the public cannot discern whether the ideas belong to Obama, CAP, Duncan, ALEC, Bill Gates or Eli Broad.
If it seems parents and teachers at this point have axes to grind, it’s because we’re immediately affected by “change” developed by non-educators to policies which are unpiloted, disproven and promoted by astroturfers by talking right past specific criticisms on the merits.
I had nothing to do with RTTT at any level, so I’m hardly qualified to take questions. But, Jake Jacobs, my best response to you is that RTTT left things to “local control.” The pressure was on the governor and state leaders to figure out what made sense for their schools. Now you frequently hear loud complaints from both the right and the left that the Obama administration tried to rule ed policy by fiat, when in fact Weiss points out the many ways that they tried to accommodate a range of solutions and possibilities, leaving it to the local leaders to make the call.
In response to Peter Cunningham’s comment that “none of them offer a responsible, practical, scalable way of protecting children at risk and fostering improvements in public education.” Mr. Cunningham, you are wrong. I, as well as many others currently and historically, have offered solutions that have been ignored.
Then, and only then, can you understand how we can support school improvement through legislation that will provide the resources children, teachers, and parents need to ensure every child is provided access to quality learning opportunities…. http://www.thecrucialvoice.com/Excellent Education for All through ESEA.pdf
Mr. Cunningham’s assumption, that none of us has more than a lick of sense, is a common misconception usually made by the very arrogant. It shows a lack of understand of the insight we commoners, who have been in troubled schools, have developed through both experience and our ability to do good research.
If all this seems a bit overwhelming, Mr. Cunningham, I did put together this simple site after the 2011 Save Our Schools March…It was a practice run for building my own website. We minions don’t have staff or clout but we do have solutions. http://supportingpubliceducation.yolasite.com/
“I served with Joanne Weiss and can affirm that Race to the Top helped spur more needed change in four years than the previous five decades of reform: higher standards, teacher evaluation, robust interventions in low-performing schools and the use of data to drive decisions.”
Hi Peter. Again, as Victoria, Jake, Christine and many others here have laid out, you do not know what you are talking about.
Higher standards?
Common Core was grounded in New Criticism, an approach developed decades ago. It helps to foster close reading practice, test taking practice. There have been far superior standards put forth over the decades. Furthermore it is ILLEGAL for the Federal government to put in place one set of standards for the entire nation. This is the role of states.
Teacher evaluations?
Again, all the experts have been raising red flags for 8 years now, and have just been ignored. Teacher evaluations need to be done locally, cause SES of students effects test scores. You can NOT evaluate teachers based on standardized test scores. This is being challenged now and will also hopefully be illegal, cause there is no research to support the approach.
Robust interventions in in low-performing schools?
No, what you helped Ms. Weiss to do was assist mayors in big cities like Chicago and Philly shut down schools, and then open charter schools to channel taxpayer money to the investors and billionaires behind all of this.
The use of data to drive decisions?
Data with an agenda behind it, to shut down low performing public schools, and disempower teachers, cut them out of the decision-making loop. Data collection without research to back up the collecting or decision-making. Are you aware of the research on the effects of high-stakes testing? If you were you’d never have supported this approach, with its obsession with data collection, and you also would have foreseen in advance the Opt Out movement and other rebellions across the nation against these policies you supported.
Are you aware of the research on effective learner-centered education, successful programs such as Victoria just pointed to, the Child Development program of Dr. James Comer, the Effective Schools movement and Mission Hill schools of Dr. Deborah Meier? These are programs that have shown they can turn around low-performing schools, but rather than use that KNOWLEDGE to drive decisions you used data you collected with no research to back it up.
There was an agenda here, to push professional educators and research to the side, so as to close public schools and make money with charters. It was put forth by New Schools Venture fund and laid out in this Democrats for Education Reform document…
From DFER’s own document:
“[Governors] of both parties nationwide have been empowered by the “cover” that has come from a Democratic President who has been willing to embrace reforms that are not always in line with the priorities of the nation’s powerful teachers unions. The evidence of what this shift in a political messenger can bring is clear-cut. As a result of the RTTT competition, fifteen states lifted caps on the creation of new charter schools, and one state enacted a charter school law. Charter schools flourished more under three years of Obama than under eight years of George W. Bush. Funding for state charter school grants, for example, stayed between about $68 million and $81 million during Bush’s two terms, but jumped to $138 million during Obama’s first full budget year.”
All of the previous cogent criticisms cover the many flaws of this entire self aggrandizing piece with scholarship and clarity. I won’t add anything other than in response to Mr. Cunningham’s arrogant and typical support. For those of us who actually have had real live breathing children in schools during this time, all I can tell you is joy is gone, arts are minimized, recess a memory, developmentally appropriate practice is a quaint notion, and teacher autonomy a thing of the past. My children have been fed a diet of test prep reformy garbage because they are responsible for school grades and teacher pay based on tests they take from March to May. That’s not what I received, not what private school children recieve, and not what any child deserves. This is not about better education. it never was. It’s about closing schools, firing teachers, controlling what teachers do and say, and destroying public education. We are living it. Your rapid change sucks because it’s not based on anything remotely good for our children, not because we are resistant to it. Some of us cannot be snowed. And some of us are tired of white guys who haven’t taught a day in their lives telling us what our kids need and how teachers should be treated. This was nothing more than good old arm twisting to get these ideas for profit in place. It’s embarrassing a university like Stanford churns out people who are part of the destruction of public education.
The [RttT] competition required applicants to address four key areas: standards and assessments, teachers and leaders, data, and turning around low-performing schools.”-Joanne Weiss
Of course RttT REQUIRED states to collect and share student data. Thanks to the executive order based weakening of FERPA laws, this data collection happens without parent permission. Listen here at a 2013 White House Datapalooza convention where the CEO of eScholar said that data is the glue that actually ties everything (the tracking and data) together. http://missourieducationwatchdog.com/common-core-is-so-important-to-the-open-data-movement-because-its-the-glue-that-actually-ties-everything-together/
Did you know that there is a new federal SLDS grant competition, with “winning” states announced this week, which aims to link early childhood data from birth (cradle to grave) and share data with multiple agencies and across states? http://ies.ed.gov/funding/pdf/2016_84372.pdf
“Applicants seeking funding under this Priority must describe how they would use grant funds to link early childhood data to K12 student data”
“If funds are requested under this priority, applicants must demonstrate that the SLDS would include or be linked to an early learning data system that includes:
(a) A unique statewide child identifier or another highly accurate, proven method to link data on an individual child;
(b) A unique statewide early childhood educator identifier;
(c) A unique program site identifier;
(d) Demographic information on children and their families; and
(e) Demographic information on early childhood educators, including data on their educational attainment, State credential or licenses held, and professional development received.
If the following data are available, applicants should describe how the SLDS would include or be linked to:
(a) Program-level data such as structure, quality, discipline, staff retention, staff compensation, and work environment;
(b) Child-level program participation and attendance data; and
(c) Kindergarten entry assessment data. “
“Interoperability. The system should use a common set of data elements with common data standards to allow interoperability and comparability of data among programs such as the Common Education Data Standards (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/ceds/)”
“If the State proposes to participate in a multi-State collaboration, clearly identify the extent to which CEDS will be employed to facilitate the collaboration. “
“If funds are requested under this priority, applicants must ensure that, at a minimum, the finance data required for Common Core of Data Fiscal reporting, including the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) and the Survey of Local Government Systems: School Systems (also known as the F-33) would be linked to school-level and, where possible, teacher- and student-level data in the SLDS.”
Doesn’t this sharing of student level data with the federal government and across states sound like a NATIONAL DATABASE?
Did you know that a national student database is prohibited? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1015c
watch out for “Footsteps 2 brilliance” they love this kind of competition for funds; and they pretend that they can make every child brilliant if you sign up for a free APP and download the “games” all the while they are data mining and gathering private family information to sell to other marketing hype/types.
you cannot “support” and “buy in” when there is a gun to your head; otherwise, there will be horse’s head in your bed…. or worse… because this deal is about our kids and our grandkids
Paraphrasing the Jeff Goldblum character in the original Jurassic Park film: “They were so busy worrying about how they could, they never thought about whether they should.”
With all the criticism being shared here we could lose sight of the potential that philanthropy and wealth has to really help people, if practiced and shared wisely. Our nation’s public schools need money and support. What they need is not more competition for scare resources, but incentives that motivate everyone and provide hope.
A great example of this is the effect that philanthropist Harris Rosen’s generosity had for fellow Americans living in poverty, in Tangelo Park, in Florida. Rosen did not set up a competitive fund, he set up a truly generous fund, that would reward all students who made an effort.
It was therefore not a race to the top but a community building experience, a strengthening of values that freed the best in people. All it required is that Rosen gave freely, providing free day care and scholarships, without a hidden agenda. He “paid it forward” - sharing his wealth with no strings attached.
Our nation needs more of this. We need the help and support of wealthy people, but we need you to give from your hearts without thinking about how “giving” is going to create more profit for you. That’s true giving, real philanthropy.
Learn from what has been successful, please. We don’t need more programs drawn out by on napkins during power lunches. We don’t need more data collected. Get out there, open your eyes and your hearts and find out what has already shown success, and everything could change rapidly.
Teachers are professionals who know how to turn around schools, we understand motivation and how children learn, but we do need help. Parents need help, and students need help. This is how the wealthy can help, and something the government could help set into motion.
You are right, Christopher, in that true philanthropists use their money “to help make life better for other people.” To do so, they have to understand what people need to “help them to help themselves.” It’s the very best thing we can do for a person in the long race of life.
Charles Stewart Mott (philanthropist) understood that concept because Frank Manley (regular Joe) showed him the way. Out of that relationship came the Community Education Movement and it served not only schools in the US but also around the world. AND, it became the basis for the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which DID help to narrow the achievement gap until the Standards, Testing, and Accountability Movement plowed the effort under.
This essay closes with the issue of how we might “Ensure Accountability.” I agree, this is a key issue, absolutely essential to consider.
Ms. Weiss said:
“...we asked applicants to submit evidence to support their claims. For some criteria, we required very specific forms of evidence. In other cases, the provision of evidence was optional.”
This is exactly what many of us here have been asking of the Dept of Education, Ms. Weiss, for almost 8 years. The silence and unwillingness to even acknowledge our criticism has been deafening.
We have been asking you to submit evidence that Common Core and RTTT are valid, wise and grounded in actual research. Professional educators have provided research and evidence for our claims, but you have not.
In fact there is not a single bit of evidence or research provided in this essay, not even a reference section. Always the Dept of Ed speaks of data, as if it were magical like fairy dust, and can solve all problems. (Thanks Peter Greene for pointing that out.)
We provide evidence to support our claims, but you don’t have to? I guess for those in positions of highest power, evidence is optional? Wow. So much for accountability…
“We required each state’s attorney general to sign a statement that attested to the accuracy of any information in his or her state’s application that pertained to state law. Race to the Top reviewers were in no position to interpret state law, so it was critical to have this check on the accuracy of applicants’ claims.”
But no need to check on the accuracy of your claims? Right, we know… “optional.”
“None of these approaches was sufficient to rein in the inclination of applicants to over-promise.”
Good thing Freud isn’t here, I think he calls this projection?
“Changes to certain federal rules would help solve this problem. Agencies should be able to set aside adequate funding to conduct peer-review processes, and they should receive broad leeway in managing those processes.”
But no peer reviews for officials in the Dept of Education? Right, optional.
“As long as the threat of losing funds remains weak, applicants will have an incentive to exaggerate first and beg for forgiveness later.”
This is true!! Yes, insightful observation. And may explain all the deceptions that came down from the top. You had your back covered by the President, as well as wealthy private citizens, and future jobs with the charter school or software industry waiting for you. No threat of losing funds. Exactly as you say, there’s “an incentive to exaggerate.”
Finally, you said:
“A well-designed competition can spur innovation, create a marketplace for new ideas, engage multiple stakeholders in a broad-based reform effort, and create conditions in which rapid change is possible—even in a traditionally change-resistant field. We will not know the full impact of Race to the Top for several more years. Already, though, it has provided important lessons for policymakers.”
I agree.
I also think we won’t see any really positive changes in education until we can Ensure Accountability at the top, where the greatest power is. You have seen Spiderman, right?
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
You have made an excellent case describing the power you welded, and how you were able to use it to create sweeping changes for a nation, even though federal laws were supposed to prevent you from doing so.
What has concerned many of us is, If YOU are not accountable, if top-level policies are not based on real research and evidence, where does such leadership take the nation?
Let me go back to Mr. Cunningham’s remark about us not offering a “responsible, practical, scalable way of protecting children at risk and fostering improvements” only this time apply, let me offer up suggestions that apply to accountability.
Since that time, community after successful community has used indicators systems. AND, most of the tools necessary to do it are FREE! Is it any wonder the education industry hasn’t allowed the conversation to go there?
Now that I’ve had a chance to glance back at my own work on this, the only segments of the system that don’t have great accountability mechanisms in place or available are the education industry, philanthropists, and politicians…The rulers of the rules!
So, what should we call this, the Art of Machiavellian Education Reform?
“Machiavellianism is “the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct”. The word comes from the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote Il Principe (The Prince), among other works.” ~ Wikipedia
What so-called “education reformers” have done in the United States is so Machiavellian its hard to believe, and so many people don’t. As the Italian author of the Prince put it himself, “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”
A quick recap of “The Fraud at the Heart of Current Education Reform:”
First, former president George Bush put in place NCLB laws, so that the number of charter schools grew in the U.S. and high-stakes testing expanded.
When Barack Obama ran for president he promised to change things, but was secretly used as a “cover” by DFER (Democrats for Education Reform), Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton Family and their charter school Wall Street investor friends.
Billionaires Broad & Gates “agents of change” Arne Duncan & yourself (Joanne Weiss, from New Schools Venture Fund) were placed in high level positions at the U.S. Department of Education, to support charter school allied governors, mayors and Broad “Academy” trainees who for sometime had been sent to take over around the nation as district superintendents.
With financing from Bill Gates (and billions acquired from various federal funds) you functioned as charter school “affiliated” agents at the Dept of Education. You were able to “leverage” change by creating the Race to the Top competition, doling out money to gain support, “requiring” governors to comply (quite possibly in violation of Federal law), and have the Common Core testing standards implemented for most of the nation.
Your Department built “power” alliances with governors and urban city mayors and (by “requiring” governors to implement teacher accountability strategies based on invalid data and junk science statistics) were able to steal power from, bypass and put fear into the hearts of America’s public school teachers
(just the kinds of strategy recommended by Machiavelli: reward your friends, scare your enemies).
Once Common Core (something you forgot to mention in your article?) & RttT were put into place, high-stakes testing got worse, the curriculum around the nation more rigid, stressful and confusing for students and teachers.
Machivellian wannabe governors (like Cuomo, Bush & Christie) and urban mayors (like Bloomberg in NY & Rahm Emanuel in Chicago) were able to use low tests scores as an excuse to close “failing” public schools and increase the pipeline of taxpayer funding to newly opened private charter schools.
All the while, a witch hunt “blame the teachers” strategy, began by President Bush (and the Walton Family with their “Waiting for Superman” propaganda film) was kept alive by President Obama’s Dept of Ed leaders like yourself, enabling corporate sponsored reformers in positions of power like Gov Christie, Gov. Cuomo, & Mayor Emmanuel to keep attention focused on teachers as the source of America’s education problems, rather than your profiteering charter supporters, ignorance of research, rigid standards, high-stakes testing obsession, lack of evidence for reforms and billionaire sponsors.
More public schools shut down, more charters opened, more money flowing to investors (as is the purpose of New Schools Venture Fund). State and urban taxpayer money in Pennsylvania, Albany, Florida and other places started to bleed out into various privatizing schemes (see journalists Jeff Bryant & Juan Gonzalez for more information on that).
Kids and teachers across the nation reported feeling fearful, confused, anxious and depressed. Some parents, teachers and students spoke out, reporting crying by students and instances of self harm, severe depression. In Atlanta, teachers cheated on the tests and were arrested. A principal accused of doing the same in New York city jumped in front of a moving train.
Teachers quit, which fortunately was part of the plan for those influencing actions at the Dept of Education. More charters were opened, inexpensive Teach For America youth with little training and no experience were sent into schools to teach. Teacher morale across the nation plummeted.
With all the increased testing, in many schools students are being put in front of computers for longer periods of time, just the opposite of what President Obama had promised in his speech to NEA teachers before his election.
As more money was spent on testing and computers funds that should have been helping impoverished schools flowed to investors and testing industries such as Pearson, Inc.
In response the Opt Out movement rises up. A finger of blame is pointed at Common Core & David Coleman, so in many places it seems to have been retired from the battle. Though Mr. Coleman is still quietly working on aligning the SATs with Common Core and in most cases its just been sent to the shop to be re-painted and rolled out again, re-branded. The testing continues, the charter school profiteering continues.
This month, you brag about your magnificent well-crafted Machiavellian strategy here in The Stanford Innovation Review. Bill Gates buys several primetime media slots on large TV stations simultaneously, grabbing Sept. 11th airtime to brag about his newest Think It Up ideas for education..
(which are actually quite good, I will admit that, since they are aligned with the research in learner-centered education that had been ignored up until now).
But rather then funding these innovations, with all his billions, he and corporate America, backed up by Wall Street financial institutions that had crashed the U.S. economy in 2008, are asking middle class and poor working families to send in their own money to fund it?
About the only thing more unbelievable than what you all have done, is that you are still spinning deceptions and getting away with it…
In Washington State the unwritten and untried CCSS were adopted very early but the legislature required the Superintendent of Public Instruction to file a full report on CCSS impacts on or before January 1, 2011 by passing law 6696 requiring him to do so. He failed to do that and no one cared. His report appeared a month late and just before a critical hearing on CCSS.
A very troublesome part of Joanne Weiss’s article concerns how success is measured. It seems success is measured by inducing others to follow a predetermined path. I must have missed any improvement in Student Learning as measured by NAEP scores.
In fact the NAEP data from CCSS early adopting and implementing Kentucky reveals big money spent for no results.
Since at least 2006, the thrust toward improvement in “failing schools” has been to move away from local control. This was very apparent in the required restructuring of “failing schools”. By Ms. Weiss’s standard this restructuring was successful as schools were forced to follow a predetermined plan. When looking at academic improvements occurring in measured student learning in restructured schools a different story emerges.
Also I missed any discussion of Federally funded American Indian schools, where 10% of teaching positions go unfilled and around 30% of schools are in mandated restructuring.
Perhaps Ms. Weiss could write an article about “funding” and what the Duncan administration did about the following:
Gordon Wright, it’s hard to hear you say RTTT left ANYTHING to local control as Weiss admits they “forced” adoption. That’s a pretty interesting choice of words. We know they were technically using incentives and punishments - at the height of the economic crisis. Obama’s cudgels and enticements resulted in my state being forced to use VAM, to tie test scores to teacher evaluations and to adopt Common Core, bypassing democratically elected officials at every level, bypassing expert educators, squelching debate and working in concert with astroturfers like Students First and Families for Excellent Schools.
This was not long after the big switcheroo - Obama campaigned with Linda Darling Hammond, but just as all the Goldman Sachs people were occupying the White House, we find an education newbie installed, who relies on private pro-reform groups. The implementation of Common Core was just hailed as a failure in NY by the governor. The science behind VAM is in serious question as the people, the courts and even the state ed department and members on the Board of Regents are demanding an explanation of the formula weighting poverty, language and disability. Even investors in for-profit education ventures are cutting losses and pulling out of this unpopular privatization campaign.
In this landscape, please help me understand your definition of local control. Because we had ours taken in NY.
How was local control preserved if one governor, one state school board president and one union boss determined for an entire state of taxpayers and directly affected stakeholders that Common Core will be upending every school, regardless whether it was struggling or not.
Where is the local control as highly exalted Long Island teacher Sheri Lederman was rated ineffective due to flawed and secret growth score formulas, and her supervisors have no mechanism to override it, forcing a lawsuit?
Where is the local control for a school placed on a receivership (state takeover) list solely due to test scores, while ignoring all the other factors? Is a hunger strike your idea of local control?
We have had at least two years of sustained opposition demanding a review of the research from the most qualified authorities. Where was the “local control” as NY’s governor doubled down on VAM through budgetary blackmail, forcing it on NY under threat of defunding schools, and then in the next budget, forcing on higher weighting of VAM beyond any other state? 200,000 test refusals later, still no one knows just how bubble tests scores are converted in teacher rating metrics. If State Supreme Court judge Roger McDonough cannot find someone in Albany to explain the formula, who will?
No, Weiss did not accommodate homegrown possibilities or let local leaders make the calls. You should have heard the conversation in our school’s evaluation committee meeting today, no one believes in VAM. If you can make me see what I missed, please explain.
COMMENTS
BY Leonie Haimson
ON September 10, 2015 02:35 PM
What’s incredible is that the author doesn’t mention that due to the huge popular backlash to RTTT, Governors are pulling away from the Common Core, trying to de-emphasize high-stakes testing, and the new ESEA is likely to legally block the US Secretary from ever being able to incentivize states from adopting any of these policies again.
BY Christopher Chase, Ph.D.
ON September 10, 2015 05:39 PM
Wow.
There is so much deception and spin in this article I don’t know where to begin. I’m a Stanford School of Education graduate who worked with real education reform in the 1990s, the Accelerated Schools Project started by former Stanford Prof. Hank Levin.
A quick response to some of the hype here, just looking at one sentence. It would take hours to go further. You wrote:
“The competition required applicants to address four key areas: standards and assessments, teachers and leaders, data, and turning around low-performing schools.”
Concerning “standards and assessments” - In reality, what happened is that your Common Core standards and assessments were put together in secrecy by people associated with testing (not learning), with a pedagogy out of the Cold War era (New Criticism) and little input from real teachers and education reform experts. You ignored research on child development, focused on high-stakes testing and rigid standards, which all the research has shown diminishes student motivation and learning.
See: Fraud at the Heart of Education Reform for more details on this:
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2015/06/13/fraud-at-the-heart-of-current-education-reform/
With “teachers and leaders” - yes, the Department of Education helped put Broad Academy affiliated persons like yourself in leadership positions. You also “leveraged” states to introduce VAMs and teacher assessments which leading researchers and statisticians such as Stanford’s Prof. Edward Haertal have said do not have validity as measures. What the research actually shows is that teachers have a much smaller effect on learning then student SES. Poverty is what diminishes learning, not “bad” teachers.
Yet, there was a witch hunt mentality shared with the media, a demonization of the profession, beginning with the President himself, saying that “bad” teachers would be located (with new assessment strategies) and terminated. Since 2008, we have seen a drop in moral among teachers as a result.
True, you focused on collecting data and testing, but you ignored all the research on effective whole school reform and student learning! This has led to something close to sabotage in many schools across the nation. This is what created the Opt Out movement and has caused so much distress for millions.
Finally, you say your intention was to “turn around” low performing schools. Is that what happened in Chicago, Philadelphia and other urban cities? Low performing public schools where not turned around, (as projects like the Accelerated Schools, Deborah Meier’s Mission Hill Schools and James Comer’s program at Yale were designed to do), they were shut down, with profit-making charters opened in their place.
Which was your intention from the very beginning. That’s the big deception here. The plan was laid out in this DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) document from 2012.
http://dfer.org/app/uploads/2015/04/Reelect-Obama.pdf
The goal was to use President Obama as a “cover” so that you could bypass the teacher’s unions and expand the numbers of charter schools. Broad Academy linked people like yourself did that by targeting the schools of the poorest American communities, with the intention of shutting them down, not turning them around.
Anyone who goes to your former employer New Schools Venture Fund can read more of the plan there, which is to very intentionally target the schools of the poorest and most disenfranchised Americans, shutting them down. Closing their doors, sending the kids on buses elsewhere and opening new charter schools.
http://www.newschools.org/2015-and-beyond
Your “reform” approach was set up to take over, manipulate and sabotage American education. Anyone who goes to the source documents of DFER and New Schools Venture can see that it was all intentionally designed to work this way, not as you spin it.
The Dept. of Education constantly talks about evidence-based reforms. Have you actually read the research on learner-centered school reforms and the dangers of high-stakes testing? I have. Decades of slow and careful research have shown that data and testing are meaningless and can even be harmful if not collected and implemented wisely. By cutting teachers and education experts (such as Stanford Prof. Linda Darling-Hammond) out of the formulation of your policies and seeking to “leverage” change you put in place one of the most destructive education policies in recent U.S. history.
Christopher Chase, Ph.D.
Professor, English Language Studies
Seinan Gakuin University
BY Victoria M. Young
ON September 10, 2015 07:31 PM
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars being used on a poorly designed experiment was a horrible waste of tax dollars at a time when schools – ACROSS THE COUNTRY – needed real help.
Let me try to explain because clearly you people don’t get it.
First, you set the rules. Then you say winners were picked that “had outstanding ideas for improving educational outcomes.” You forgot the part about how they had to be in lock step with what you leaders already decided. Then, you all thought it was a good idea to pick winners that “were also in a strong position to implement those ideas.”————That is where all logical thinking about real reform (improving those schools that aren’t “strong”) is dead in the water. Do you wonder why historically we never succeed in “scaling-up” ideas that “work” in states that already have good outcomes? Think about it.
Competitive grants? What a horrible way to do the business of educating all children!
BY Cheri Kiesecker
ON September 10, 2015 09:46 PM
THIS confession is astounding: “First, we forced alignment among the top three education leaders in each participating state—the governor, the chief state school officer, and the president of the state board of education—by requiring each of them to sign their state’s Race to the Top application. In doing so, they attested that their office fully supported the state’s reform proposal. “
How distrubing that the federal government would “promote approaches to education reform that would be coherent, systemic, and statewide” when there are laws prohibiting the US Dept of Ed from directing local education. RTTT, taxpayer money, could have, SHOULD have been used to help struggling schools in a time of “profound budgetary challenge for state governments”, instead you chose this as an opportunity. “A perfect storm for reform,” with no teacher or parent approval necessary or invited involvement. Many of those on your “panel of independent education experts” refused to sign off on this rushed RTTT “induced” experiment. You have used our children as your guinea pigs, testing out common standards, and data driven instruction. You have changed laws to allow the taking and sharing of children’s personal data and have been backed by billions of edtech dollars, because they stand to make even more money from our children’s data and from the busines that is now education. The title of this piece is fitting. The principles competing here are right and wrong. Clearly, you have not raced to the top of anything but greed and abuse of power. It’s no wonder the nation is denouncing the RTTT common core reform and its ” four key areas.”
BY Christopher Chase, Ph.D.
ON September 10, 2015 10:36 PM
Excellent observations Cheri and Victoria. Make sure you keep a copy of your responses. I doubt very much that Ms. Weiss is going to wan to to allow our responses to remain public. The Department of Education never sought criticism or critical input from teachers or successful researchers in the field. Their talk of transparency, accountability and encouraging “critical thinking skills” has been a con game from the start. Hopefully, the folks at the Stanford Social Innovation Review will allow our voices to be heard.
BY Ira Shor
ON September 11, 2015 06:46 AM
Leonie Haimson and Christopher Chase reveal the spin and deception in this self-promoting piece by a CCSS insider. Thanks for clarifying what really happened with CCSS.
BY Anne Manusky
ON September 11, 2015 09:16 AM
Leonie, Christopher, Victoria and Cheryl - you correctly provide what are disturbing revelations to the decline in public education; those notice the Journal title “Stanford Social Innovation Review, with ” SOCIAL INNOVATION” in caps. It is not about education, in which it has failed; it has not helped our children socially either, I’m afraid. Failure on both levels, and has cost our children years of education, and the public billions of dollars—not ARRA funds - the US taxpayer’s money.
BY A. S. Evans
ON September 11, 2015 12:50 PM
This conclusion is not good science or valid interpretation of the current data. RTTT has been a failure. Need to go back to the drawing board.
BY Leonie Haimson
ON September 11, 2015 02:53 PM
The National Academy of Sciences warned that RTTT was imposing a non-evidenced based teacher evaluation system, and yet the powers that be including Ms. Weiss didn’t care. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12780/letter-report-to-the-us-department-of-education-on-the-race-to-the-top-fund Also, be sure to check out Peter Greene’s evisceration of this screed http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/09/competitive-baloney-rehabilitating-rttt.html?spref=tw
BY Christopher Chase
ON September 11, 2015 08:40 PM
Leonie Haimson said: “The National Academy of Sciences warned that RTTT was imposing a non-evidenced based teacher evaluation system, and yet the powers that be including Ms. Weiss didn’t care. “
Excellent point.
And as Cheri Kiesecker pointed out, this really is quite an amazing confession given that it’s against the law for the Federal Government to force national policy on education.
“We forced alignment among the top three education leaders in each participating state—the governor, the chief state school officer, and the president of the state board of education—by requiring each of them to sign their state’s Race to the Top application. In doing so, they attested that their office fully supported the state’s reform proposal”
In the section on Transparency Ms. Weiss wrote that: “participants developed a common vocabulary for talking about education reform and a shared understanding of what “high-quality” reform efforts look like.”
Given that you ignored the input of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as leading experts and researchers working with actual effective education reform, how can you say this? It’s a fabrication of truth.
You developed a con artist vocabulary, that was NOT evidence or research based. You brought in a business plan for leveraging a nation’s entire education system, like it was some kind of Wall Street corporate takeover.
Transparency? We’ve had to do a lot of digging to figure out that this hijacking of public education was engineered by billionaires posing as “Philanthropreneurs.”
BY MELISSA MARINI SVIGELJSMITH
ON September 11, 2015 08:40 PM
I actually couldn’t finish reading the whole article, because I began to become physically ill thinking about the life-altering changes that NCLB & RttT have created for my students. The over emphasis on high stakes testing has stripped them of everything that kids used to enjoy in school: music, art, physical education, and even recess. Students who may not perform well on tests because of their life circumstances, that they did not ask for, or bring upon themselves, are pushed out of schools, and eventually give up, often feeding the school-to-prison pipeline. The pressure on kids to perform well on tests because their school, teacher, district, and city are counting on them is akin to abuse. No child should feel that level of responsibility.
Meanwhile, the educator “accountability system” based on test scores is a farce. Every statistician in the country recognizes that the only valid causal connection shown through standardized test scores is socioeconomic status.
I find it embarrassing that there are people in this country, who may consider themselves highly educated, that believe that competition for funding public education is moral or appropriate. It is reprehensible that we live in a country that perpetuates a system of segregation through inadequate and inequitable school funding in the 21st century. Appropriately funding education in America is fundamental to our democracy. Concluding that competition for public education dollars has been beneficial for our children, especially our most vulnerable young citizens, is like concluding that competition among children to gain their family’s love is healthy. It’s absurd. All children deserve to be loved, nurtured, and have their needs met. All children deserve equal opportunity and access to a quality education, in a system that respects educators and values community schools.
Since I didn’t have the fortitude to finish reading the article, I can only hope that the author eventually expressed a rational and humanitarian view that denounced treating children like products before the article concluded.
BY Dr. Eric Brandon
ON September 12, 2015 05:22 AM
At one point in the article we are told that reforms should be coherent, systemic, and statewide. That’s nice. But what happens when the reforms have those qualities but they have the additional quality of being bad. Bad, coherent, systemic, and statewide reforms are still bad. In fact, they do the most damage because they are systemic and statewide. Instead of experimenting on just some children, they experiment on all of them. And when the experiment goes bad, as is happening with our 20 year experiment with excessive, high-stakes testing, the reformers will say “Oh, well,” and move on to their next big idea to experiment on students with. Meanwhile, real educators will have to pick up the pieces of their “creative destruction” and try to make students whole again. What fun.
BY Madeleine Murphy
ON September 12, 2015 02:51 PM
Can I just say that I’m delighted to read these comments, which are well-informed, spot-on, and unanimous in their disapproval.
Peter Greene has a great take-down of this too at curmudgucation.blogspot.com.
BY AP Dillon
ON September 13, 2015 08:42 AM
Amazing job writing a piece of this length that avoided using COMMON CORE a single time, yet admits RTTT was used to make it happen.
Ms. Weiss was working for New Schools Venture Fund when she was tapped for DOE. NSVF was heavily backed by The Gates Foundation to push Common Core. This appointment was not coincidence, it was the beginning of a ground game.
http://www.newschools.org/news/joanne-weiss-appointment
She is now at LearnZillion, a “digital curriculum and professional development” company. Also not a coincidence with Gates dumping millions into Digital Ed right now.
See: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/joanne-weiss-former-chief-of-staff-to-the-united-states-secretary-of-education-joins-learnzillions-board-of-directors-249417741.html
BY jean sanders
ON September 13, 2015 08:50 AM
go to Pioneer Institute (BOSTON) and see why former commissioner Robert Scott Texas did not fall into the trap of requesting the RTT funding from Arne Duncan… Also, go go Art of Teaching by Jack Hassard and look up what was wrong with the applications the states submitted (and how the governors signed off on lies in order to get the funds)...
BY jean sanders
ON September 13, 2015 08:54 AM
look up how other federal policies have “failed”… for example “SIG” Andy Smarick at Fordham Institute writes this one (I point him out, I cannot recommend anything he does) … ask look up what “Reading First” failed as a national policy (granted in some states they did some good things but overall the evaluations of Reading First were not good. Do you see any parallels across these three funding cycles ????? I do… I don’t have time to educate you on all the things that are wrong with the Weiss “puff piece”, Instead I have to work on why Melody Sloan another of Duncan’s lackey’s is destroying the special education intent that we worked so hard on in Massachusetts with Chapter 766 which preceded the 94.142 IDEA…. can you tell I am angry?
BY jean sanders
ON September 13, 2015 09:00 AM
this is a very boastful article; instead of patting herself on the back, Ms. Weiss should be aware that there have been dissenters from the very beginning of this federal policy. here are some examples…Jack Hassard: A Skeptical Look at Science Standards - Blogs
blogs.edweek.org/.../jack_hassard_a_skeptical_look.htm…
Education Week
Mar 5, 2012 - Authoritative demands were issued by the US Department of Education in its Race to the Top Fund insisting that if states did not adopt the ...
Race to the Top Results are In: 16 Winners, More than 300 ...
nepc.colorado.edu/.../race-top-results-ar…
National Education Policy Center
Dec 21, 2012 - Jack Hassard ... The Race to the Top continues with the announcement that 16 educational organizations ... Panels reading the top 61 applications came to DC for the week of November 26 to make the final cut to 16. Winners.
Instead of School’s Industrial Culture, Students Need the ...
http://www.artofteachingscience.org/instead-of-schools-industrial-culture-stude...
by Jack Hassard on January 22, 2014 7 Comments ... Freedom to learn has many interpretations and applications. The word cloud that is shown in Figure 1 is ...
29 - The Art of Teaching Science
http://www.artofteachingscience.org/page/30/?pu003d113
by Jack Hassard on November 4, 2013 Leave a Comment ... The State Charter School Commission ruled on the 16 applications it received from charter ... Thanks to the Race to the Top Fund, the race is on to implement a system to score ...
The Simplest and Most Obvious Incontrovertible Reason to ...
educationalchemy.com/.../the-simplest-and-most-obvious-incontrovertibl…
Nov 27, 2014 - ... Times · The Art of Teaching Science: Jack Hassard · The fight for Indiana .... and techniques and to modernize their procedures and applications — at ... products foisted upon states called Race to the Top funding runs out, ...
Did Atlanta Educators Get Equal Justice Before the Law ...
dianeravitch.net/2015/04/06/atlanta-cheating-scandal/
Apr 6, 2015 - ... to customers, claim to have lost loan modification applications when they actually shredded them, .... this is Jack Hassard’s blog on the topic ...
BY jean sanders
ON September 13, 2015 09:05 AM
even if you swallow her boastful attitude whole, I must point out that Ms. Weiss knows nothing about the solid years of the change models over the decades. Some people have never heard of Seymour Sarason, know nothing of the work of Goodlad and Anderson etc… but I must call her out on not understanding the diffusion and dissemination models that were originally part of the NIE… and the exchange models that were in place during the formation of the Labs and Centrs; unfortunately, all of that good research and the work of U. Michigan (Havelock) and others in the understanding of social theory and change. Why doesn’t Stanford cover any of that instead of this “puff piece” to build her career ladder?
BY jean sanders
ON September 13, 2015 09:15 AM
it’s Sunday morning and I shouldn’t be this angry; but Ms. weiss seems to my opinion to be a dilettante….. Here is another major researcher who knows something about consequential validity … when these feds propose a shoddy impleentaton strategy it makes me exceedingly angry.Addressing the impact of poverty on student achievement ...
https://www.ednc.org/.../addressing-impact-poverty-student-achievement
Release of the first letter grades for North Carolina public schools on February 5 ... in terms of future school achievement but non ... Ladd is Susan B. King ...
[PDF]The Impacts of Charter Schools on Student …
nepc.colorado.edu/files/EPRU-0412-76-OWI[1].pdf
THE IMPACTS OF CHARTER SCHOOLS ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: EVIDENCE FROM NORTH CAROLINA ... Evidence From North Carolina Author: Helen F. Ladd, …
Ladd and Fiske: If North Carolina Wants to Improve ...
dianeravitch.net/2015/02/20/ladd-and-fiske-if-north-carolina-wants…
Feb 20, 2015 · Ladd and Fiske: If North Carolina Wants to Improve Achievement, It Must Address ... is that the relationship between poverty and low school achievement ...
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Table 8: Impacts of North Carolina Charter Schools on Achievement Gains, by Student’s ... Charter Schools in North Carolina Author: Helen Ladd and Robert Bifulco
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BY Christine Langhoff
ON September 14, 2015 03:26 PM
Like you, Melissa, I had a hard time reading through to the end, but came back several times to do so. Weiss’ take on what has occurred in public education is so far from the on the ground reality that I felt as if I were in a parallel universe.
Here’s the true confessions section which most overwhelmed me:
“...we requested (but did not require) the inclusion of signatures by three district officials—the superintendent, the school board president, and the leader of the relevant teachers’ union or teachers’ association—on each district-level MOU. This approach, among other benefits, gave unions standing in the application process without giving them veto power over it…we imposed an eligibility requirement. A state could not enter the competition if it had laws on the books that prohibited linking the evaluation of teachers and principals to the performance of their students. Several states changed their laws in order to earn the right to compete.” Translation: let’s cut teachers and principals out of the equation; they’ll just be in the way.
Weiss’ laudatory characterization of this kind of fiscal arm-twisting to achieve her goals demonstrates a reformista attitude which Jitu Brown has rebutted in recent days - “You’re not better than us, you’re not smarter than us, you don’t love these kids more than we do.” The comments section reflects that the low regard in which Arne Duncan’s DOE holds the American classroom teacher, like so much of DOE policy, is not based on reality.
BY Peter Cunningham
ON September 14, 2015 08:39 PM
I served with Joanne Weiss and can affirm that Race to the Top helped spur more needed change in four years than the previous five decades of reform: higher standards, teacher evaluation, robust interventions in low-performing schools and the use of data to drive decisions. Obviously, many of the people writing comments disagree though none of them offer a responsible, practical, scalable way of protecting children at risk and fostering improvements in public education. Joanne’s closing line not only captures the animating spirit of RTT but the hostile and irrational pushback to reform that is reflected in the comments: “Rapid change is possible—even in a traditionally change-resistant field.” Thanks Joanne.
BY Jake Jacobs
ON September 14, 2015 08:50 PM
I agree with Leonie and Christopher, but I’ll add that RTTT made some basic philosophical mistakes:
1- VAM metrics have not proven valid or reliable for measuring teacher quality because it uses sports betting methodology that assumes teacher proficiency is measured by how much money students go on to make as adults
2 - dangling money to incentivize politicians to change education policy is a perverse, corrupting incentive that is neither sustainable, nor sound educational practice that develops proven policy through piloting and long-term refining
3 - the federal government tramples the 10th Amendment to impose testing on the states, thereby influencing the curriculum, which is prohibited
4 - The premise that we mandate kids must reach performance benchmarks by a certain age ignore the science of child development and imposes punishments on teachers for factors beyond their control
5 - RTTT’s requirement ti tie teacher evaluations to test scores has ALEC roots and continues a disgraceful tradition of pay-for-play and revolving door politics
BY Gordon Wright
ON September 14, 2015 08:51 PM
Wow, you can almost hear the grinding of axes in this comment thread. As with any sweeping and ambitious government initiatives, I’m sure there were compromises made in the planning and execution of RTTT. But at the end of the day, this was one of countless federal grant competitions, and if it led to more change than anticipated, then it’s a sign of the initiative of the governors and other local political leaders to use this scant bit of political cover to effect real policy shifts.
Meanwhile, I found this reflection by someone integrally involved in the process to be a really useful glimpse into the Dept’s process and the political psychology of dealing with different states.
BY Jake Jacobs
ON September 14, 2015 09:14 PM
Gordon, can you explain why high performing districts with high existing standards and proven track records over decades had to be changed?
Besides the points above, I still don’t understand the need to “standardize” student performance (by age, no less) when underlying resources are so unequal and un-standardized.
As such, the high performing districts in NY were upended, told to comply with arbitrary VAM evaluations, and losing precious learning time every year to tests and prep.
Why didn’t Weiss leave successful districts alone and concentrate support in struggling schools? Teachers don’t need state-supplied bubble tests to know who is struggling and in which areas, but the fact that NCLB kicked off by awarding George Bush’s brother a lucrative testing contract should have been a tip off. The transfer of public funds to private vendors is a net loss of resources and services for kids in classrooms, but the use of RTTT metrics to make major school decisions is a power grab away from the states into the hand of central planners at a time where the public cannot discern whether the ideas belong to Obama, CAP, Duncan, ALEC, Bill Gates or Eli Broad.
If it seems parents and teachers at this point have axes to grind, it’s because we’re immediately affected by “change” developed by non-educators to policies which are unpiloted, disproven and promoted by astroturfers by talking right past specific criticisms on the merits.
BY Gordon Wright
ON September 14, 2015 09:25 PM
I had nothing to do with RTTT at any level, so I’m hardly qualified to take questions. But, Jake Jacobs, my best response to you is that RTTT left things to “local control.” The pressure was on the governor and state leaders to figure out what made sense for their schools. Now you frequently hear loud complaints from both the right and the left that the Obama administration tried to rule ed policy by fiat, when in fact Weiss points out the many ways that they tried to accommodate a range of solutions and possibilities, leaving it to the local leaders to make the call.
BY Victoria M. Young
ON September 14, 2015 09:32 PM
In response to Peter Cunningham’s comment that “none of them offer a responsible, practical, scalable way of protecting children at risk and fostering improvements in public education.” Mr. Cunningham, you are wrong. I, as well as many others currently and historically, have offered solutions that have been ignored.
To begin with, you need to understand the change process - http://thecrucialvoice.com/solutions/the-change-process/
…then the school improvement process - http://thecrucialvoice.com/solutions/school-improvement-process/
…and what TRUE reform looks like - http://thecrucialvoice.com/2014/09/08/true-education-reform-is-possible/
…understand the most successful approach to improving education for the disadvantaged that this country ever used - http://thecrucialvoice.com/community-education-concept/
Then, and only then, can you understand how we can support school improvement through legislation that will provide the resources children, teachers, and parents need to ensure every child is provided access to quality learning opportunities…. http://www.thecrucialvoice.com/Excellent Education for All through ESEA.pdf
Mr. Cunningham’s assumption, that none of us has more than a lick of sense, is a common misconception usually made by the very arrogant. It shows a lack of understand of the insight we commoners, who have been in troubled schools, have developed through both experience and our ability to do good research.
If all this seems a bit overwhelming, Mr. Cunningham, I did put together this simple site after the 2011 Save Our Schools March…It was a practice run for building my own website. We minions don’t have staff or clout but we do have solutions. http://supportingpubliceducation.yolasite.com/
BY Christopher Chase
ON September 15, 2015 06:59 AM
Peter Cunningham wrote:
“I served with Joanne Weiss and can affirm that Race to the Top helped spur more needed change in four years than the previous five decades of reform: higher standards, teacher evaluation, robust interventions in low-performing schools and the use of data to drive decisions.”
Hi Peter. Again, as Victoria, Jake, Christine and many others here have laid out, you do not know what you are talking about.
Higher standards?
Common Core was grounded in New Criticism, an approach developed decades ago. It helps to foster close reading practice, test taking practice. There have been far superior standards put forth over the decades. Furthermore it is ILLEGAL for the Federal government to put in place one set of standards for the entire nation. This is the role of states.
Teacher evaluations?
Again, all the experts have been raising red flags for 8 years now, and have just been ignored. Teacher evaluations need to be done locally, cause SES of students effects test scores. You can NOT evaluate teachers based on standardized test scores. This is being challenged now and will also hopefully be illegal, cause there is no research to support the approach.
Robust interventions in in low-performing schools?
No, what you helped Ms. Weiss to do was assist mayors in big cities like Chicago and Philly shut down schools, and then open charter schools to channel taxpayer money to the investors and billionaires behind all of this.
The use of data to drive decisions?
Data with an agenda behind it, to shut down low performing public schools, and disempower teachers, cut them out of the decision-making loop. Data collection without research to back up the collecting or decision-making. Are you aware of the research on the effects of high-stakes testing? If you were you’d never have supported this approach, with its obsession with data collection, and you also would have foreseen in advance the Opt Out movement and other rebellions across the nation against these policies you supported.
Are you aware of the research on effective learner-centered education, successful programs such as Victoria just pointed to, the Child Development program of Dr. James Comer, the Effective Schools movement and Mission Hill schools of Dr. Deborah Meier? These are programs that have shown they can turn around low-performing schools, but rather than use that KNOWLEDGE to drive decisions you used data you collected with no research to back it up.
There was an agenda here, to push professional educators and research to the side, so as to close public schools and make money with charters. It was put forth by New Schools Venture fund and laid out in this Democrats for Education Reform document…
From DFER’s own document:
“[Governors] of both parties nationwide have been empowered by the “cover” that has come from a Democratic President who has been willing to embrace reforms that are not always in line with the priorities of the nation’s powerful teachers unions. The evidence of what this shift in a political messenger can bring is clear-cut. As a result of the RTTT competition, fifteen states lifted caps on the creation of new charter schools, and one state enacted a charter school law. Charter schools flourished more under three years of Obama than under eight years of George W. Bush. Funding for state charter school grants, for example, stayed between about $68 million and $81 million during Bush’s two terms, but jumped to $138 million during Obama’s first full budget year.”
see: http://dfer.org/app/uploads/2015/04/Reelect-Obama.pdf#sthash.D5tTHz4A.dpuf
For a full overview of what happened, one can read Diane Ravitch’s most recent book, or read this 3 page summary that I wrote:
Fraud at the Heart of Current Education Reform
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2015/06/13/fraud-at-the-heart-of-current-education-reform/
BY Rosemarie Jensen
ON September 15, 2015 07:37 AM
All of the previous cogent criticisms cover the many flaws of this entire self aggrandizing piece with scholarship and clarity. I won’t add anything other than in response to Mr. Cunningham’s arrogant and typical support. For those of us who actually have had real live breathing children in schools during this time, all I can tell you is joy is gone, arts are minimized, recess a memory, developmentally appropriate practice is a quaint notion, and teacher autonomy a thing of the past. My children have been fed a diet of test prep reformy garbage because they are responsible for school grades and teacher pay based on tests they take from March to May. That’s not what I received, not what private school children recieve, and not what any child deserves. This is not about better education. it never was. It’s about closing schools, firing teachers, controlling what teachers do and say, and destroying public education. We are living it. Your rapid change sucks because it’s not based on anything remotely good for our children, not because we are resistant to it. Some of us cannot be snowed. And some of us are tired of white guys who haven’t taught a day in their lives telling us what our kids need and how teachers should be treated. This was nothing more than good old arm twisting to get these ideas for profit in place. It’s embarrassing a university like Stanford churns out people who are part of the destruction of public education.
BY Rep. Mark Finchem, Arizona
ON September 15, 2015 10:10 AM
The [RttT] competition required applicants to address four key areas: standards and assessments, teachers and leaders, data, and turning around low-performing schools.”-Joanne Weiss
Of course RttT REQUIRED states to collect and share student data. Thanks to the executive order based weakening of FERPA laws, this data collection happens without parent permission. Listen here at a 2013 White House Datapalooza convention where the CEO of eScholar said that data is the glue that actually ties everything (the tracking and data) together. http://missourieducationwatchdog.com/common-core-is-so-important-to-the-open-data-movement-because-its-the-glue-that-actually-ties-everything-together/
Did you know that there is a new federal SLDS grant competition, with “winning” states announced this week, which aims to link early childhood data from birth (cradle to grave) and share data with multiple agencies and across states? http://ies.ed.gov/funding/pdf/2016_84372.pdf
“Applicants seeking funding under this Priority must describe how they would use grant funds to link early childhood data to K12 student data”
“If funds are requested under this priority, applicants must demonstrate that the SLDS would include or be linked to an early learning data system that includes:
(a) A unique statewide child identifier or another highly accurate, proven method to link data on an individual child;
(b) A unique statewide early childhood educator identifier;
(c) A unique program site identifier;
(d) Demographic information on children and their families; and
(e) Demographic information on early childhood educators, including data on their educational attainment, State credential or licenses held, and professional development received.
If the following data are available, applicants should describe how the SLDS would include or be linked to:
(a) Program-level data such as structure, quality, discipline, staff retention, staff compensation, and work environment;
(b) Child-level program participation and attendance data; and
(c) Kindergarten entry assessment data. “
“Interoperability. The system should use a common set of data elements with common data standards to allow interoperability and comparability of data among programs such as the Common Education Data Standards (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/ceds/)”
“If the State proposes to participate in a multi-State collaboration, clearly identify the extent to which CEDS will be employed to facilitate the collaboration. “
“If funds are requested under this priority, applicants must ensure that, at a minimum, the finance data required for Common Core of Data Fiscal reporting, including the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) and the Survey of Local Government Systems: School Systems (also known as the F-33) would be linked to school-level and, where possible, teacher- and student-level data in the SLDS.”
Doesn’t this sharing of student level data with the federal government and across states sound like a NATIONAL DATABASE?
Did you know that a national student database is prohibited? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1015c
Visit ItsMyPII.com for more information and what you can do to stop the collection and sharing of student data without parent consent. http://itsmypii.com/who-authorized-the-mining-of-childrens-personal-information/
BY Valentina
ON September 15, 2015 10:26 AM
Thanks so much for this thoughtfully explained piece on Race to the Top—it’s helpful and informative to see it laid out like this!
BY jean sanders
ON September 15, 2015 10:40 AM
watch out for “Footsteps 2 brilliance” they love this kind of competition for funds; and they pretend that they can make every child brilliant if you sign up for a free APP and download the “games” all the while they are data mining and gathering private family information to sell to other marketing hype/types.
BY jean sanders
ON September 15, 2015 10:42 AM
you cannot “support” and “buy in” when there is a gun to your head; otherwise, there will be horse’s head in your bed…. or worse… because this deal is about our kids and our grandkids
BY Barry Wilson
ON September 15, 2015 10:49 AM
This article is a complete fantasy as evidenced by the comments.
BY Richard P Phelps
ON September 15, 2015 11:42 AM
Paraphrasing the Jeff Goldblum character in the original Jurassic Park film: “They were so busy worrying about how they could, they never thought about whether they should.”
BY Christopher Chase
ON September 15, 2015 04:24 PM
With all the criticism being shared here we could lose sight of the potential that philanthropy and wealth has to really help people, if practiced and shared wisely. Our nation’s public schools need money and support. What they need is not more competition for scare resources, but incentives that motivate everyone and provide hope.
A great example of this is the effect that philanthropist Harris Rosen’s generosity had for fellow Americans living in poverty, in Tangelo Park, in Florida. Rosen did not set up a competitive fund, he set up a truly generous fund, that would reward all students who made an effort.
It was therefore not a race to the top but a community building experience, a strengthening of values that freed the best in people. All it required is that Rosen gave freely, providing free day care and scholarships, without a hidden agenda. He “paid it forward” - sharing his wealth with no strings attached.
Our nation needs more of this. We need the help and support of wealthy people, but we need you to give from your hearts without thinking about how “giving” is going to create more profit for you. That’s true giving, real philanthropy.
Learn from what has been successful, please. We don’t need more programs drawn out by on napkins during power lunches. We don’t need more data collected. Get out there, open your eyes and your hearts and find out what has already shown success, and everything could change rapidly.
Teachers are professionals who know how to turn around schools, we understand motivation and how children learn, but we do need help. Parents need help, and students need help. This is how the wealthy can help, and something the government could help set into motion.
Harris Rosen and Tangelo Park on TODAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK_lxEPBwRA
BY Rebecca McCullough
ON September 15, 2015 04:41 PM
“To protect children at risk and foster improvements in public schools”-let’s make sure our schools are properly funded.
BY Victoria M. Young
ON September 15, 2015 04:52 PM
You are right, Christopher, in that true philanthropists use their money “to help make life better for other people.” To do so, they have to understand what people need to “help them to help themselves.” It’s the very best thing we can do for a person in the long race of life.
Charles Stewart Mott (philanthropist) understood that concept because Frank Manley (regular Joe) showed him the way. Out of that relationship came the Community Education Movement and it served not only schools in the US but also around the world. AND, it became the basis for the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which DID help to narrow the achievement gap until the Standards, Testing, and Accountability Movement plowed the effort under.
BY Christopher Chase
ON September 16, 2015 08:46 AM
Great example, Victoria. I really hope there are some philanthropists who are reading and reflecting thoughtfully on all we have been sharing here.
BY Christopher Chase
ON September 16, 2015 08:48 AM
This essay closes with the issue of how we might “Ensure Accountability.” I agree, this is a key issue, absolutely essential to consider.
Ms. Weiss said:
“...we asked applicants to submit evidence to support their claims. For some criteria, we required very specific forms of evidence. In other cases, the provision of evidence was optional.”
This is exactly what many of us here have been asking of the Dept of Education, Ms. Weiss, for almost 8 years. The silence and unwillingness to even acknowledge our criticism has been deafening.
We have been asking you to submit evidence that Common Core and RTTT are valid, wise and grounded in actual research. Professional educators have provided research and evidence for our claims, but you have not.
In fact there is not a single bit of evidence or research provided in this essay, not even a reference section. Always the Dept of Ed speaks of data, as if it were magical like fairy dust, and can solve all problems. (Thanks Peter Greene for pointing that out.)
We provide evidence to support our claims, but you don’t have to? I guess for those in positions of highest power, evidence is optional? Wow. So much for accountability…
“We required each state’s attorney general to sign a statement that attested to the accuracy of any information in his or her state’s application that pertained to state law. Race to the Top reviewers were in no position to interpret state law, so it was critical to have this check on the accuracy of applicants’ claims.”
But no need to check on the accuracy of your claims? Right, we know… “optional.”
“None of these approaches was sufficient to rein in the inclination of applicants to over-promise.”
Good thing Freud isn’t here, I think he calls this projection?
“Changes to certain federal rules would help solve this problem. Agencies should be able to set aside adequate funding to conduct peer-review processes, and they should receive broad leeway in managing those processes.”
But no peer reviews for officials in the Dept of Education? Right, optional.
“As long as the threat of losing funds remains weak, applicants will have an incentive to exaggerate first and beg for forgiveness later.”
This is true!! Yes, insightful observation. And may explain all the deceptions that came down from the top. You had your back covered by the President, as well as wealthy private citizens, and future jobs with the charter school or software industry waiting for you. No threat of losing funds. Exactly as you say, there’s “an incentive to exaggerate.”
Finally, you said:
“A well-designed competition can spur innovation, create a marketplace for new ideas, engage multiple stakeholders in a broad-based reform effort, and create conditions in which rapid change is possible—even in a traditionally change-resistant field. We will not know the full impact of Race to the Top for several more years. Already, though, it has provided important lessons for policymakers.”
I agree.
I also think we won’t see any really positive changes in education until we can Ensure Accountability at the top, where the greatest power is. You have seen Spiderman, right?
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
You have made an excellent case describing the power you welded, and how you were able to use it to create sweeping changes for a nation, even though federal laws were supposed to prevent you from doing so.
What has concerned many of us is, If YOU are not accountable, if top-level policies are not based on real research and evidence, where does such leadership take the nation?
Something to reflect upon?
See also:
Reclaiming the Conversation on Education (Susan Ohanian)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzfU9laGUh8
Feds Confess Truth About Common Core - (Jane Robbins)
http://thepulse2016.com/jane-robbins/2015/09/14/feds-confess-truth-about-common-core/
Competitive Baloney & Rehabilitating RTTT (Peter Greene)
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.jp/2015/09/competitive-baloney-rehabilitating-rttt.html
BY Victoria M. Young
ON September 16, 2015 09:46 AM
Let me go back to Mr. Cunningham’s remark about us not offering a “responsible, practical, scalable way of protecting children at risk and fostering improvements” only this time apply, let me offer up suggestions that apply to accountability.
Let’s go back to a study done in 1991 and presented to then Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/04/1362327/-Education-Counts-Setting-the-Record-Straight?showAll=yes Obviously, he rejected the idea AND the warnings of the panel.
Since that time, community after successful community has used indicators systems. AND, most of the tools necessary to do it are FREE! Is it any wonder the education industry hasn’t allowed the conversation to go there?
For another view of accountability, let’s turn to a simple chart.
http://thecrucialvoice.com/federal-education-law-2/accountability/
We’ve got all kinds of accountability mechanisms but we have failed when it comes to real shared responsibility to the children of this country.
http://thecrucialvoice.com/for-you-to-use/accountability-as-a-shared-responsibility/
Now that I’ve had a chance to glance back at my own work on this, the only segments of the system that don’t have great accountability mechanisms in place or available are the education industry, philanthropists, and politicians…The rulers of the rules!
BY Christopher Chase
ON September 19, 2015 02:33 AM
Thanks Victoria!
BY Christopher Chase
ON September 19, 2015 02:34 AM
So, what should we call this, the Art of Machiavellian Education Reform?
“Machiavellianism is “the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct”. The word comes from the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote Il Principe (The Prince), among other works.” ~ Wikipedia
What so-called “education reformers” have done in the United States is so Machiavellian its hard to believe, and so many people don’t. As the Italian author of the Prince put it himself, “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”
A quick recap of “The Fraud at the Heart of Current Education Reform:”
First, former president George Bush put in place NCLB laws, so that the number of charter schools grew in the U.S. and high-stakes testing expanded.
When Barack Obama ran for president he promised to change things, but was secretly used as a “cover” by DFER (Democrats for Education Reform), Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton Family and their charter school Wall Street investor friends.
Billionaires Broad & Gates “agents of change” Arne Duncan & yourself (Joanne Weiss, from New Schools Venture Fund) were placed in high level positions at the U.S. Department of Education, to support charter school allied governors, mayors and Broad “Academy” trainees who for sometime had been sent to take over around the nation as district superintendents.
With financing from Bill Gates (and billions acquired from various federal funds) you functioned as charter school “affiliated” agents at the Dept of Education. You were able to “leverage” change by creating the Race to the Top competition, doling out money to gain support, “requiring” governors to comply (quite possibly in violation of Federal law), and have the Common Core testing standards implemented for most of the nation.
Your Department built “power” alliances with governors and urban city mayors and (by “requiring” governors to implement teacher accountability strategies based on invalid data and junk science statistics) were able to steal power from, bypass and put fear into the hearts of America’s public school teachers
(just the kinds of strategy recommended by Machiavelli: reward your friends, scare your enemies).
Once Common Core (something you forgot to mention in your article?) & RttT were put into place, high-stakes testing got worse, the curriculum around the nation more rigid, stressful and confusing for students and teachers.
Machivellian wannabe governors (like Cuomo, Bush & Christie) and urban mayors (like Bloomberg in NY & Rahm Emanuel in Chicago) were able to use low tests scores as an excuse to close “failing” public schools and increase the pipeline of taxpayer funding to newly opened private charter schools.
All the while, a witch hunt “blame the teachers” strategy, began by President Bush (and the Walton Family with their “Waiting for Superman” propaganda film) was kept alive by President Obama’s Dept of Ed leaders like yourself, enabling corporate sponsored reformers in positions of power like Gov Christie, Gov. Cuomo, & Mayor Emmanuel to keep attention focused on teachers as the source of America’s education problems, rather than your profiteering charter supporters, ignorance of research, rigid standards, high-stakes testing obsession, lack of evidence for reforms and billionaire sponsors.
More public schools shut down, more charters opened, more money flowing to investors (as is the purpose of New Schools Venture Fund). State and urban taxpayer money in Pennsylvania, Albany, Florida and other places started to bleed out into various privatizing schemes (see journalists Jeff Bryant & Juan Gonzalez for more information on that).
Kids and teachers across the nation reported feeling fearful, confused, anxious and depressed. Some parents, teachers and students spoke out, reporting crying by students and instances of self harm, severe depression. In Atlanta, teachers cheated on the tests and were arrested. A principal accused of doing the same in New York city jumped in front of a moving train.
Teachers quit, which fortunately was part of the plan for those influencing actions at the Dept of Education. More charters were opened, inexpensive Teach For America youth with little training and no experience were sent into schools to teach. Teacher morale across the nation plummeted.
With all the increased testing, in many schools students are being put in front of computers for longer periods of time, just the opposite of what President Obama had promised in his speech to NEA teachers before his election.
As more money was spent on testing and computers funds that should have been helping impoverished schools flowed to investors and testing industries such as Pearson, Inc.
In response the Opt Out movement rises up. A finger of blame is pointed at Common Core & David Coleman, so in many places it seems to have been retired from the battle. Though Mr. Coleman is still quietly working on aligning the SATs with Common Core and in most cases its just been sent to the shop to be re-painted and rolled out again, re-branded. The testing continues, the charter school profiteering continues.
This month, you brag about your magnificent well-crafted Machiavellian strategy here in The Stanford Innovation Review. Bill Gates buys several primetime media slots on large TV stations simultaneously, grabbing Sept. 11th airtime to brag about his newest Think It Up ideas for education..
(which are actually quite good, I will admit that, since they are aligned with the research in learner-centered education that had been ignored up until now).
But rather then funding these innovations, with all his billions, he and corporate America, backed up by Wall Street financial institutions that had crashed the U.S. economy in 2008, are asking middle class and poor working families to send in their own money to fund it?
About the only thing more unbelievable than what you all have done, is that you are still spinning deceptions and getting away with it…
Christopher Chase
Related:
The Art of Machiavellian Education Reform
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/the-art-of-machiavellian-eduction-reform/
Did Former DOE Official Admit to Breaking U.S. Law?
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2015/09/13/did-former-doe-official-admit-to-breaking-u-s-law/
How Children Naturally Learn
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/how-children-naturally-learn/
Fraud at the Heart of Current Education Reform
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2015/06/13/fraud-at-the-heart-of-current-education-reform/
BY Danaher M Dempsey Jr
ON September 19, 2015 02:23 PM
In Washington State the unwritten and untried CCSS were adopted very early but the legislature required the Superintendent of Public Instruction to file a full report on CCSS impacts on or before January 1, 2011 by passing law 6696 requiring him to do so. He failed to do that and no one cared. His report appeared a month late and just before a critical hearing on CCSS.
BY Danaher M Dempsey Jr
ON September 19, 2015 02:36 PM
A very troublesome part of Joanne Weiss’s article concerns how success is measured. It seems success is measured by inducing others to follow a predetermined path. I must have missed any improvement in Student Learning as measured by NAEP scores.
In fact the NAEP data from CCSS early adopting and implementing Kentucky reveals big money spent for no results.
BY Danaher M Dempsey Jr
ON September 19, 2015 03:10 PM
Since at least 2006, the thrust toward improvement in “failing schools” has been to move away from local control. This was very apparent in the required restructuring of “failing schools”. By Ms. Weiss’s standard this restructuring was successful as schools were forced to follow a predetermined plan. When looking at academic improvements occurring in measured student learning in restructured schools a different story emerges.
Also I missed any discussion of Federally funded American Indian schools, where 10% of teaching positions go unfilled and around 30% of schools are in mandated restructuring.
Perhaps Ms. Weiss could write an article about “funding” and what the Duncan administration did about the following:
http://mathunderground.blogspot.com/2015/09/treaties-violated-by-lack-of-highly.html
BY Jake Jacobs
ON September 22, 2015 06:08 PM
Gordon Wright, it’s hard to hear you say RTTT left ANYTHING to local control as Weiss admits they “forced” adoption. That’s a pretty interesting choice of words. We know they were technically using incentives and punishments - at the height of the economic crisis. Obama’s cudgels and enticements resulted in my state being forced to use VAM, to tie test scores to teacher evaluations and to adopt Common Core, bypassing democratically elected officials at every level, bypassing expert educators, squelching debate and working in concert with astroturfers like Students First and Families for Excellent Schools.
This was not long after the big switcheroo - Obama campaigned with Linda Darling Hammond, but just as all the Goldman Sachs people were occupying the White House, we find an education newbie installed, who relies on private pro-reform groups. The implementation of Common Core was just hailed as a failure in NY by the governor. The science behind VAM is in serious question as the people, the courts and even the state ed department and members on the Board of Regents are demanding an explanation of the formula weighting poverty, language and disability. Even investors in for-profit education ventures are cutting losses and pulling out of this unpopular privatization campaign.
In this landscape, please help me understand your definition of local control. Because we had ours taken in NY.
How was local control preserved if one governor, one state school board president and one union boss determined for an entire state of taxpayers and directly affected stakeholders that Common Core will be upending every school, regardless whether it was struggling or not.
Where is the local control as highly exalted Long Island teacher Sheri Lederman was rated ineffective due to flawed and secret growth score formulas, and her supervisors have no mechanism to override it, forcing a lawsuit?
Where is the local control for a school placed on a receivership (state takeover) list solely due to test scores, while ignoring all the other factors? Is a hunger strike your idea of local control?
We have had at least two years of sustained opposition demanding a review of the research from the most qualified authorities. Where was the “local control” as NY’s governor doubled down on VAM through budgetary blackmail, forcing it on NY under threat of defunding schools, and then in the next budget, forcing on higher weighting of VAM beyond any other state? 200,000 test refusals later, still no one knows just how bubble tests scores are converted in teacher rating metrics. If State Supreme Court judge Roger McDonough cannot find someone in Albany to explain the formula, who will?
No, Weiss did not accommodate homegrown possibilities or let local leaders make the calls. You should have heard the conversation in our school’s evaluation committee meeting today, no one believes in VAM. If you can make me see what I missed, please explain.
BY Mike
ON November 5, 2015 10:51 AM
To the author: did you spend your whole life practicing to lie in such a grand fashion or were you born with the gift of deception?
BY Danaher M Dempsey Jr
ON November 5, 2015 11:02 AM
Perhaps the author would care to comment now that NAEP 2015 results are available.
http://mathunderground.blogspot.com/2015/11/naep-math-collapse-and-common-core.html