Rhee cloaks her partisan agenda

Michelle Rhee was in Ohio yesterday, and had a Q&A with StateImpact. A few of her answers raised eyebrows.

Q.What are your thoughts on Gov. John Kasich; do you think you have his support in these efforts?

A: It’s very interesting. John Kasich is a Republican, I’m a Democrat, so we certainly don’t agree on all issues. But as it pertains to education and education reform, I have found Gov. Kasich to be a very, very strong proponent of reform.

What people label themselves as is a matter of personal preference, but one isn't hard pressed to notice that Rhee spent the better part of 2011 working very closely with Republican governor's and finding so few friends in the Democratic party that her lobbying front group "StudentsFirst" had to go out and hire a PR flack. You don't have to take our word for it though. Leaked in a memo, Rhee spoke of her "Waiting for Superman" event with the governor being designed to boost the governor's flagging approvals

2:00-6:30pm
Drive to Cleveland!
@ 6:10 Governor Kasich will start the viewing of Waiting for Superman. Margaret Spelling will give a pre-taped special message at the beginning. Mafara will be on site.
(NOTE: WFS will be broadcast via webcam to six other town hall meetings through out the state. The locations were chosen based on districts where we need to sure up support for the Governor’s budget. It’s also being broadcast via webcam for house parties that were put together by the Partnership for Ohio’s Future.)

Did we also mention that Rhee's lobby group helped craft parts of SB5? They did. So when she talks about how popular her agenda is, being reminded it was defeated 62%-38% isn't being unkind, it's being truthful.

This, however, wasn't the Q&A that raised our eyebrows the most.

Q. It seems that some of the things that you stand for (like tying performance to teacher pay and opposing last-hired, first-fired) have really come to be synonymous with the Republican Party’s reform efforts and anti-union, anti-liberal (agenda) in Ohio. How did that develop in your own personal belief system?

A: For example last-in, first-out basically says that if you’re the last teacher hired, you must be the first teacher fired at the time of a layoff. Makes absolutely no sense. Nobody wants layoffs to occur, but if they do have to occur then we have to do our best to ensure that the best teachers, the most highly effective teachers are maintained in the system. So I don’t see that as a Republican point of view, I don’t see that as a Democratic point of view, I see that as a pro-kid stance.

When asked about how she balances her claims to be a Democrat with her alliances with Republican governor's, she avoids the question altogether. Given how easy it is to document her Republican bona fides, that come as no surprise.

Rhee could have pivoted away form that uncomfortable question with all manner of responses. But as if to further prove our point that corporate education reformers all have a fetish for teachers losing their jobs, Rhee couldn't help herself and responded with an answer wholly about teachers losing their jobs. It's seems pathological.

The fact that Rhee and her lobby group have to resort to such contortions so early in their efforts is no surprise. We've long ago documented how deceptive they are about their agenda, and SB5's massive defeat by actual voters demonstrates they might be wise to keep their corporate education reform agenda cloaked - because when that agenda is exposed, people really don't like what they see.

Mayor Jackson has a secret Ed plan

The Plain Dealer has a report that hints at Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson having a education reform plan.

Mayor Frank Jackson is working on a plan to make the Cleveland schools academically successful and financially stable, a task that will require changes in state law and that Gov. John Kasich said "could set a standard for the whole state."

We don't know what this plan is however, because Jackson isn't saying.

Jackson declined Wednesday to discuss details of his plan, saying that would be premature.

We do know a few things though. Like most corporate education reformers, Jackson isn't collaborating with educators.

Cleveland Teachers Union President David Quolke, whose members would be most affected if the plan renews Jackson's earlier push for changes in teacher rules and contracts, said Wednesday that he has "absolutely no knowledge" of Jackson's plans.

He said CTU is always willing to discuss changes and collaborate to improve the schools, but has not been included.

It is no surprise that the Governor seems delighted by this new, as Jackson had previously stated he supported SB5 like education reforms, even while denying he supported SB5. The fact that the plan is currently secret and no educator discussions have taken place provides more than a clue as to the direction Jackson wishes to take Cleveland schools.

The very real problem facing Cleveland schools isn't a lack of corporate education reform, but instead the state having raided its budget.

The district is facing tight financial restrains with the existing $13.2 million deficit, the recent recall of more than 400 teachers and state funding cuts totaling $14.5 million.

Jackson is now having to plan a local levy push, along with lay offs and service recutions in order to compensate for this massive loss of revenue. Perhaps Jackson should spend a few minutes talking to the Governor not about corporate ed reform, but school funding reform - the administration is looking for ideas on a new funding formula.

UPDATED: Oops, You're fired!

If you read a lot of corporate education reform "studies" as we do, there's one common theme running through most of them. Much like Mitt Romney, they would really like to fire people, teachers specifically.

The rate at which they want to fire teachers varies, some only want to fire 1 in 20, others would really prefer to fire 1 in 5. The Governor himself would like nothing more than to fire some teachers too (though taking his axe to the states education budget is already doing the heavy lifting)

"We pay good teachers more, but I'm going to suggest that we hold all teachers accountable. Teachers who can't teach shouldn't be in the classroom. ... If we've got teachers who can't do the job there's no excuse for leaving them in the classroom."

The latest round of this fad came in a much ballyhooed study, with front page New York Times treatment.

The New York Times published an article on a new National Bureau of Economic Research study on the long-term effects of high value-added teachers on their students
[...]
After a discussion on the costs of keeping a minimally effective teacher, one of the authors, John N. Friedman, remarks, “the message is to fire people sooner rather than later.” His co-author, Raj Chetty, goes further: “Of course there are going to be mistakes—teachers who get fired who do not deserve to get fired.”

That's an uncharacteristic moment of truth. In the desire to fire lots of teachers using unproven data models and evaluation rubrics, there's going to be some collateral damage. Sure you may have spent tens of thousands of dollars, and years of your life earning your degrees so you can pursue your passion, but if some secret proprietary data model says you've got to go, well, them's the breaks, and besides, there's always some casino dealer TFA recruit with 5 weeks of training to ride to the rescue on their white horse.

Nobody want's to see chronically bad teachers in the classroom, but why don't these corporate backed studies and reforms first turn to employing policies to improve struggling teachers abilities, instead of immediately reaching for the ejector cord? Where are the think tank studies on what an effective intervention program would look like? Where's the money for professional development? The Governor, in his own words says he wants to pay good teachers more, when is that going to happen? It's all stick and no carrot.

Who would want to work in a profession that treats its workforce in such a callous and arbitrary manner?

When it comes to increasing the effectiveness of the teacher workforce, school districts should first give an ineffective teacher a chance and the necessary supports to improve. If the teacher does not improve, the district should fire her. But if a teacher can be fired—or believes that she could be— due to a statistical error, the impact on the quality of teaching workforce could be disastrous. Why would a bright young professional choose a career where she could be the mistake?

That's a big important question. It's also a question we have an answer to. Michelle Rhee's legacy of firing "ineffective teachers" is now in plain view, and the view isn't pretty

If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend Washington Post reporter Bill Turque's analysis of Michelle Rhee's legacy one year after she left the D.C. public schools. Turque writes about the "churn and burn" in the D.C. teacher corps since the introduction of the controversial new IMPACT teacher evaluation and merit pay system: One-third of all teachers on the payroll in September 2007 no longer work for the district, and inexperienced teachers are more clustered than ever in low-income schools and neighborhoods. We know this is problematic because DC's own data shows that 22 percent of teachers with six to 10 years of experience are rated "highly effective," compared to just 12 percent of teachers with less than six years experience.

Policies the describe the need to fire lots of people will have a significant, negative, first order effect on the entire workforce. In the end, perhaps like Mitt Romney, those proposing such solutions just like to fire people.

UPDATE

Speaking of liking to fire people. Wow

New criteria for dropout schools proposed

Charter operators have long used a loophole in Ohio's lax charter laws to skirt and avoid accountability. Some of those loopholes are getting smaller. Gongwer

Dropout recovery charter schools have long been shielded from Ohio's closure laws for poor performance but the Department of Education revealed details Monday on how it might fairly grade those schools.

Advocates for the schools that serve students age 17 to 22 who either dropped out of school or who are at risk of doing so have said their institutions should be graded differently from traditional schools because they work with challenging student populations.
[...]
ODE staff laid out eight criteria by which they said the state could score the dropout recovery schools in an equitable manner.

The eight criteria are as follows:

• Academic growth, If this standard were adopted, however, it would only apply to students who are engaged and participating a certain number of days out of the year.
• The schools' graduation test passage rate as a cumulative rate. It would not be the same indicator as for traditional schools, which is first-time passage of the test in 10th grade.
• The schools' extended graduation rate. Designed to give schools credit for graduating students in four years, five years, six years, seven years."
• Credits earned as an indication of progress toward a diploma.
• College and career readiness with the former including apprenticeships and two-year and four-year degrees.
• Community collaboration. A measure of working on an individualized education plan for these students and measuring whether those (plans) exist for students.
• Sustained enrollment and attendance, which addresses that challenge of getting students to participate.
• Sponsor rating, which would attempt to address the uniqueness of dropout recovery schools in their mission and population.

Only time will tell if these criteria are meaningful enough and vigorously pursued to have any meaningful impact on students academic achievements.

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success

Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point.

The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life -- Newsweek ranked it number one last year -- and Finland's national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world.

Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best.

Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle.

So there was considerable interest in a recent visit to the U.S. by one of the leading Finnish authorities on education reform, Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Earlier this month, Sahlberg stopped by the Dwight School in New York City to speak with educators and students, and his visit received national media attention and generated much discussion.

And yet it wasn't clear that Sahlberg's message was actually getting through. As Sahlberg put it to me later, there are certain things nobody in America really wants to talk about.

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Money Matters

In a topical follow up to our article on Ohio's lack of a school funding formula, The Shanker Institute adds this weight of evidence to the funding debate. We'd like to draw specific attention to the areas we have bolded.

Our new report, written by Rutgers professor Bruce Baker and entitled “Revisiting the Age-Old Question: Does Money Matter in Education?” reviews this body of evidence.

Contrary to the canned rhetoric flying around public discourse on education finance, high-quality research like that discussed in Baker’s review does not lend itself to broad, sweeping conclusions. Some things work and others don’t, and so the strength and consistency of the money/results relationship varies by how it’s spent, the students on whom it spent, and other factors. Sometimes effects are small, and sometimes they’re larger.

Nevertheless, on the whole, Baker’s review shows that there is a consistently positive effect of higher spending on achievement. Moreover, interventions that cost money, such as higher teacher salaries, have a proven track record of getting results, while state-level policies to increase the adequacy and equitability of school finance have also been shown to improve the level and distribution of student performance.

Finally, and most relevant to the current budget context, the common argument that we can reduce education funding without any harm to (and, some argue, actual improvement of) achievement outcomes has no basis in empirical evidence.

Without question, there is plenty of room for improvement in how we finance our public education system, and much to learn about how spending affects short- and long-term outcomes. But the fact that some people are not only arguing that money makes no difference, but also that reducing funding will cause no harm (and might even help), can only be described as a fantasy, dressed up with misleading graphs, unproven “off the shelf” cost-cutting measures and gigantic misinterpretations of the impressive body of evidence on this topic.

More funding will not solve all our problems, but, as Baker puts it, “sufficient financial resources are a necessary underlying condition for providing quality education.”

In other words, money matters.