She then went on to discuss the startling, new positions of education scholar Diane Ravitch, once an advocate and now a critic of testing, charters, standards, and school closings. Incredibly, the Globe has still not followed the lead of the Washington Post or the NY Times in covering her turnaround in its news columns.
In short, Vennochi wrote an eminently sensible piece on ed reform that was shocking only because we have become so accustomed to reading Globe boilerplate on this issue.
http://www.boston.com/bostongl…
Would the venerable Beantown news institution collapse as a result of this dramatic violation of canon law? Worry not. There are still a few absolutes in this world.
On Friday, the day after Vennochi’s column, a trademark-condescending Globe editorial appeared, giving a conditional pat on the head to Boston superintendent Carol Johnson for doing a good job “for now” in shaking up the five city schools and reassigning some staff. The Globe expressed its hope that the teachers would be retrained (Gee, thanks.) The editorialist also reminded us that that parents want results (MCAS scores?) and they are growing very impatient! Apparently the Globe has now elected itself to speak for all parents. Hey, why not.
http://www.boston.com/bostongl…
Just a day later, Dr. Sandra Stotsky, a great champion of MCAS, re-appeared on the op ed page, a familiar stomping ground. She is peeved because supposedly easier federal standards may trump her tougher state standards. Dr Stotsky is also upset because venders (i.e., test companies) are lining up to cash in on these new national standards. It is unclear why she wasn’t equally indignant when the testing industry happily took tens of millions from us for MCAS (I may be low-balling it).
http://www.boston.com/bostongl…
Wikipedia does not make clear how much teaching experience the many-titled Stotsky actually has. We are told she taught elementary school (Is she really comfortable with testing little kids?) and high school language classes. How this qualifies her to speak on her new passion, state social studies standards, I do not know, but I hope to find out when I join her on a panel at the Pioneer Institute on March 31.
That will be a homecoming of sorts, because Ms. Stotsky has worked with and for the conservative Pioneer Institute for many years. And for many years, the Globe op ed editor has made space available for the Institute on a need-to-print basis.
How many Pioneer Institute op ed have there now been since 1993? Many. Perhaps one day, we will even hear what Dane Ravitch has to say in this exclusive New England forum. Why, even teachers may one day get the chance to share their thoughts.
Dream on.
ps: Just after I finished this piece I learned that Ravitch had an op ed piece on Sunday in the Los Angeles Times. Hello, Boston Globe. Where are you?
http://www.latimes.com/news/op…
Half the renamed Department of Education sees Mass. standards as a meal ticket. The raised standards keep the need alive for “consulting” to districts, which many of them move on to after leaving the DoE, either on their own or through an established firm. Education has its own answer to the “revolving door” of lobbyists-policymakers – “revolving door” between education bureaucrat and consultant. Consultants like Dr. Slotsky.
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p>(This doesn’t change the fact that Mass. standards are harder as they should be…just that they’re harder for all the wrong reasons.)
I always find it curious the idea that the MOST important thing about standards is that they should be “rigorous” or hard. I agree with Richard Rothstein that there’s no such thing as standards that are appropriately challenging for every student in our public system. Some will be ludicrously hard for some and too easy for others. Not to mention the confusion between standards and cut scores on standardized tests–two different things that are often presented as one. (On a related note I wonder what Obama/Duncan mean by career and college ready standards. Are those the same thing? Are they and should they be the same for all students? I think not.)
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p>But back to the revolving door. Can you elaborate for us, Sabutai, on how the revolving door functions in MA? I’d like to hear more of the juicy details on that. Follow the money? Who is profiting from all this?
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p>Thanks.
Most of what there is to say, I wrote here. Basically, Measured Progress was started by a group of DoE bureaucrats who left their jobs en masse. Then the state quickly privatized/outsourced the test composition to that company. Now, the DoE essentially mandates the hiring of outside consultants (through professional development requirements, and grant programs) who often are former bureaucrats from the DoE. In my favorite schtick, these former bureaucrats go to Measured Progress, which then sells their services to districts looking to raise MCAS scores.
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p>Given that the DoE is in bed with teacher colleges (Deval’s policy guru is Dana Faria-Mohler, head of Bridgewater State College), it also provides an incentive to get ever more expensive and useless graduate degrees.
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p>As for standards, I believe in minimal standards. Unfortunately, the do-or-die approach favored by DevalBama results in no incentive to go beyond the minimum. Thus any student with more than minimal talent, and any teacher with more than minimal skill, or encouraged to redirect those struggling to reach the minimum, rather than better their own outcomes.
I don’t think any individual fits this entire profile, but many, many of them fit the partial. Imagine three Dept. of Education Bureaucrats, Dave, Dirk, and Dean:
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p>Year 0 – Dave, Dirk and Dean. write regulations concerning mandatory testing. The three work on writing the test for a year or two. Soon, Dirk and Dean leave to work for Measured Progress.
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p>Year 2 – Dave and colleagues award test-writing privatization bid to Measured Progress (and old buddies Dirk and Dean)
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p>Year 3 – DoE Dave participates in meetings that create competitive grants that divert education money from general funding to districts Dave and friends choose on the basis of spending lots of money on outside consultants.
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p>Year 4 – After too many students pass the test, DoE bureaucrats (led by fmr. chief David Driscoll) arbitrarily raise passing score.
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p>Year 5 – Dave leaves the DoE (with nice pension coming), goes to work just over the border for Measured Progress with old buddies Dirk and Dean.
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p>Year 6 – In-between writing a culturally biased, incomplete test with Dirk and Dean, Dave is also paid to visit districts (paid by grants awarded by regulations Dave wrote) to teach them how (he and) his company write the test (after he gave them the contract).
I hadn’t seen your 2008 post on this until now.
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p>Unfortunately, if things keep going in the direction Race to the Top is taking us, we’ll see more of this and more permutations of it on a grand scale, with “turnaround partners” like Mass Insight pocketing chunks of federal education money to explain to folks in “chronically underperforming” schools and districts how to turn it all around (the way they have turned things around in….where? when?).
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p>Seems like Mass Insight is already a big winner in the Race to the Top competition. According to Ed Week, all six states that partnered with Mass Insight in their applications for RTTT $$ made it into the final round.
Have you seen the new proposed (draft) national standards, the Common Core State Standards initiative yet? We’ve been looking at them, specifically the English standards for grades 9 through 12, with some attention to grade 8 for articulation purposes. Our math folks have been looking at theirs, and their reaction is the same as ours. HFS. Raising the bar is an understatement. I have some concerns about the emphasis on rhetoric (given that we don’t normally teach students how to evaluate their own thinking) as well as the recommended readings per grade level (Gatsby for freshmen? Really?). I plan on commenting to that effect during the public comment window that is open until April 2.
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p>These standards are scheduled for adoption in 2010-2011.
Grapes not Gatsby.
Makes one dislike them, and maybe even dislike books in general. That’s been my experience, anyway.
Is that middle school especially is better spent engaging in students a desire and capability to learn in the future, than stuffing their heads with facts right now. Better they read a good book slightly below “grade level” (which has been easing upward constantly since the 50s) as a precursor to more, than have a bad one thrown at them as the first and last book they’ll ever read at level.
…on the reading part, but it seems that facts should come first so that high school doesn’t get spent reviewing the basics.
Growing up my experience was that assigned books were pretty dry. There’s a sign in the library at a school I work in that says, “There is not a child who doesn’t like to read, just one who hasn’t found the right book yet.” Now of course one is not going to like to read if he struggles to read, which is why literacy must be a priority in the early years. When I sub my number one rule is when you finish your work you get a book. Occasionally a kid whines he doesn’t like to read, even with every subject and genre available in the classroom collection, but I need to remind myself that maybe there’s an issue there.
I don’t have the expertise to confidently comment on these. I did look at my own domain (history: 6-8) and was a bit surprised. If these standards will be a range, it’s not a bad idea. But they can’t be a minimum. Most eighth graders struggle with fact v opinion, without bringing in “reasoned judgment”.
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p>
I think the sense I’m getting from people who have looked at their respect areas is that they standards are ambitious across the board, to say the least. I suspect some of the foot-dragging in getting the new standards out in Massachusetts may be tied to this initiative. Does anyone know for sure?
That seeing skill-based rather than content-based history standards is odd (though I recognize this is literacy). Part of is thrilled at the idea…part of me not so much. I don’t want this to be another gateway into the elimination of citizenship as a value of our education system.
Where and when have charter schools outperformed regular ones?
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p>In Boston. Now.
http://www.tbf.org/utilitynavi…
Thanks, Charley.
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p>I’m familiar with the Boston Foundation study, which I think has been misinterpreted to bolster claims of across-the-board charter superiority. But my “where? when?” question was not where and when charter schools have outperformed regular ones, but where and when has Mass Insight turned around chronically underperforming schools?
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p>Well, from where I sit (and commented below), I don’t view the new proposed federal standards as easier than the current high school ELA standards in Massachusetts; they’re harder. My colleagues in math say the new proposed high school math standards are also harder.
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p>Methinks Dr. Stotsky has an inflated opinion of the current curriculum frameworks. As an English teacher, I’d definitely encourage the Commonwealth to adopt the new standards as proposed as they are more rigorous and reflect a commitment to depth over breadth that is egregiously lacking in our current frameworks.