“Michigan’s MEAP test could undergo a radical change by the 2014-15 school year — becoming an online assessment given in schools across the country.”

“Michigan adopted the common core standards in June, a requirement to be part of the Smarter Balances Assessment Consortium, a group of states creating the new standardized test.”

This of course is based on the Race to the Top Assessment Program. “Creation of the new test is contingent upon $350 million in U.S. Department of Education grants expected to be handed out in September. Part of the Race to the Top money was set aside for two grants to develop assessments for common core standards.”

“Faster test results could make helping kids easier” — as if that were the main problem identified by teachers, students and parents. At least for lead poisoned families living in Detroit, this represents a violent aloofness of immense proportion.

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From Alan Singer’s July 2 piece in The Huffington Post, a few important trends are noted. For example:

But a closer look at the Locke [highschool] miracle, way down in the Times article, exposes what has actually taken place there. In 2007, a former principal complained that Locke was the Los Angles dumping ground for problem students. Only 15% of its students could pass the state standardized math test. The first thing Green Dot did was get rid of all the troubled students and bring in a fresh supply. It also dumped most of the teachers – keeping those prepared to work longer hours for less pay, what it defined as enthusiasm. Locke reopened in Fall 2008 with a new freshman class. Green Dot also fixed up the place to make it attractive for the photo ops.

The big problem was cost, although Green Dot is a non-profit company, its administrators do get paid. The four year turnaround at Locke was $15 million over budget. This does not include part of a $60 million grant from the Gates Foundation to support state development, which makes the actual cost of the turnaround much higher. Unfortunately, the federal government has set a $6 million cap for the reorganization of an individual school. Green Dot is now more than 150% over budget. The rest of the money, $9 million, was covered by donations from foundations, supposed charities, but often business groups hoping to make lucrative profits from the dismantling of public education.

Locke is actually a good model of what educational change will really cost. The school now has additional administrators, security, two psychologists, busing, and health services for students, in addition to staff development provided by the Gates Foundation. None of this has anything to do with being a charter school. This is just the real cost of educating inner city children.

I think that any school would show improvement wtih the extensive investment of those kinds of resources — except for the reportedly aggressive use of force.

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, New York questions have been raised about another miracle charter school, the Hebrew Language Academy. While 15% of the students in New York City are white, white children make up two-thirds of the students attending this school. This is essentially a private religious school for white Jewish families financed with government money. The parents have made this very clear, explaining in a New York Times article that if it were not the Hebrew Language Academy they would be paying $20,000 a year to send their children to private religious schools. Additionally, the curriculum is chauvinistically pro-Israel. There are Israeli flags all over the building and children sing songs about Israeli pioneers who built homes on empty land, the area’s Arab population conveniently ignored.

This school also receives outside money to operate, from a Jewish philanthropist named Michael Steinhardt who also happens to be a hedge fund manger and a big financial supporter of Israel. The school’s organizers, using Steinhardt’s money, plan to open a string of similar charter schools around the country.

So, not only are charters associated with increasing segregation by class and race, we here too see the ideological sifting and public support for religious instruction that will take place.

And finally, the last part is suggestive an all too common connection between charter operators, fraud and abuse.

This superhero principal actually grew up in this Bronx neighborhood and has an understanding of the life faced by these kids. However, he is in constant trouble with school authorities and has bounced from school to school. He is now under investigation by the Department of Education for three serious rule violations and was suspended at least once.

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The data also show, for the first time in Detroit, a link between higher lead levels and poor academic performance. About 60% of DPS students who performed below their grade level on 2008 standardized tests had elevated lead levels.

The higher the lead levels, the lower the MEAP scores, though other factors also may play a role.

The research — the result of an unusual collaboration between the city’s Department of Health & Wellness Promotion and DPS — also reveals that children receiving special education were more likely to have lead poisoning.

The data, involving tens of thousands of city children, underscore the persistent and troubling legacy of lead, even as the overall number of lead cases continues to fall in Detroit and across the nation.

June Jackson didn’t realize until it was too late that her daughter Taylor, now 12, had high lead levels as a toddler. “I feel bad, like it’s my fault,” Jackson said. The girl receives special education and still struggles with reading and memory problems, which her mother attributes to lead.

“For years, we’ve blamed the schools and the teachers for kids failing,” said Brenda Gelman-Berkowitz, a school social worker for the district. These new findings, she said, show the answer may be more complicated. “We haven’t seen this connection with lead before. But I see evidence of it everywhere.”

Nightmare of lead a reality for many families in Detroit

Reggie Cureton doesn’t recall pulling bits of lead paint off the wall near his crib as a toddler and eating it. For a long time, his parents didn’t notice.

He was a bright baby who sat up early, walked early and recognized letters and colors early. But between the ages of 1 and 2, a blood test showed he had 21 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood — more than double the level of concern set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now 9, Reggie is great at building with Legos but struggles with reading, memory and paying attention.

Reggie’s challenges are familiar to his mother, Jeanine, who has her own history of lead contamination — and to generations of families living in Detroit. Despite significant declines in Detroit, thousands of children continue to be diagnosed with lead poisoning each year, a by-product of older homes with lead-based paint, pervasive poverty and an often unhealthy diet.

‘These numbers are scary’

Now, a landmark study by the city health department and Detroit Public Schools of lead data and test scores shows that the higher the lead level, the worse a student’s scores on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program exam, or MEAP.

Overall, 58% of roughly 39,000 DPS students tested — 22,755 children — had a history of lead poisoning, according to the study.

Perhaps more startling: Of the 39,199 students tested as young children, only 23 had no lead in their bodies.

“These numbers are scary,” said Lyke Thompson, a Wayne State University professor who has studied lead poisoning in Detroit for more than a decade.

The correlation between high lead levels and low test scores carries particular resonance in Detroit, where students have fared poorly on academic achievement tests.

DPS students ranked last in the nation in 2009 on the National Assessment of Education Progress math test for fourth- and eighth-graders. The city’s MEAP scores are consistently among the lowest in the state.

“This is a crisis,” said Carole Ann Beaman, disabilities coordinator for DPS. “There is a clear connection between lead poisoning and academic problems, which is relevant to understanding achievement gaps and why schools are failing.”

Other factors — including poverty and parents’ level of education — may play a role. But the impact of lead on test scores has lingered in the shadows. Until now.

DPS emergency financial manager Robert Bobb said lead exposure is one factor that leaves some kids poorly prepared for school.

“Schools can be partners by, among other things, emphasizing reading early, as we have done, ensuring healthy foods in the cafeteria and making certain that physical education is universal,” Bobb said. “Sadly, these results are not a surprise,” said Marie Lynn Miranda, a former Detroiter and director of the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative at Duke University.

Miranda led http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1940087/” target=”_blank”>studies in North Carolina and Connecticut that linked lead exposure to lower reading scores. “People have gotten complacent about lead.”

No level is safe

In 1991, the CDC set 10 micrograms as its level of concern for lead in children, but dozens of studies have shown brain damage at lower levels.

Many experts count kids with levels of 5 micrograms as lead-poisoned. The CDC said in 2005 that there is no safe level of lead for children. Although there are many ways children are exposed, most cases are from paint in homes.

Last year, more than 5,000 cases of lead poisoning were diagnosed in Detroit children younger than 6. More than 800 of those kids had lead levels of 10 micrograms or higher.

Exposure to lead in young children damages developing brains — and its effects are permanent, so once a child has high levels, the harm is done. Detroit has long led the state in lead poisoning, consistently accounting for more than 50% of Michigan’s cases.

“This is an educational crisis, and we should be doing something about it,” said Randall Raymond, geographic information specialist for DPS who helped analyze the data.

School and health officials compared lead levels in children with student test scores on the 2008 MEAP exam to determine whether lead affected academic performance.

Such studies are rare because medical records are confidential. Schools usually don’t know which kids are poisoned.

Analysts were able to find lead test results for nearly half the current students in DPS (not every child is tested) and determine the schools and areas of the cities most affected.

Results also showed that kids in special education had higher lead levels.

WSU nursing professor Lisa Chiodo studied a group of Detroit children from birth to age 20. The study showed that kids with higher lead levels had lower IQs — findings consistent with decades of research nationally.

Children with lead poisoning can become discouraged. One study found these students are seven times more likely to drop out than those with low levels.

Because of problems with learning and memory, these children tend to be easily frustrated, inattentive and withdrawn, Chiodo said. By adolescence, this frustration can turn to aggression or delinquency.

Chiodo said it’s time to do something to help. “We need curriculums for lead-exposed kids,” Chiodo said. “We need interventions.”

A family affected

The Cureton family is well aware of the damage lead causes.

Mom Jeanine Cureton, now 26, was 2 1/2 when she was diagnosed with lead poisoning so severe she needed chelation, injections of chemicals that draw lead from the body. Her lead level was 87 micrograms.

“They told my mom not to expect much from me as far as learning ability,” she said. “But I had a praying mom who worked with me.”

Cureton didn’t finish high school, reads at a grade-school level and struggles with memory problems, but she hopes to finish her education and dreams of being a nurse.

When their son Reggie was diagnosed as a toddler with lead poisoning, she and her husband, Reginald, thought they were doing all the right things, including frequently mopping floors and window sills to keep lead dust down.

But their second son, Maurice, now 7, also had high lead levels. The culprit was lead dust in the home’s carpet, an assessment found.

That was two houses ago.

The foreclosed house they bought in March has lead, too, tests show. The family hopes to remediate it with the help of ClearCorps, a nonprofit program that tests homes and helps families get rid of lead by stripping, sanding and repainting walls and trim.

In the meantime, the parents say they do everything they can to keep their youngest children from getting lead poisoning, and they work to stimulate the brains of the two oldest.

They also moved the older boys out of DPS — where Reggie had been having difficulties — to the private Detroit Merit Academy, where students get fruit and veggie snacks, journals to log how much they read at home and specialized learning plans.

“We work with our kids,” said Reginald Cureton. That means reading books with them, working on phonics and vocabulary, a computer program to teach them Spanish, trips to the Detroit Zoo, growing a garden and leaving motivation tips on the refrigerator.

“We want to do things with and for our kids that we didn’t have,” Jeanine Cureton said.

‘Gives me hope’

Experts say the Curetons are on the right track in working to minimize lead’s damage.

Tomas Guilarte, chairman of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, led a 2003 study, which found that a stimulating environment could improve the learning in lead-poisoned rats. Experts are excited by the research, which has not yet been done on humans.

“That study gives me hope,” said researcher Miranda of Duke.

Miranda led a 2009 study in North Carolina that found lead exposure helps explain the achievement gap between African-American and white students in reading tests.

Similar studies have produced similar results in Chicago, Massachusetts and Connecticut, Miranda said.

Kids need intervention at an early age to help them overcome some of the effects of lead poisoning, several experts said.

WSU’s Chiodo and Teresa Holtrop, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Michigan, said they hope to get a grant this year for a computer program called CogMed. Studies have shown that working with the program 30 minutes a day for five weeks can improve children’s memories, which in turn improves learning.

The Curetons are upbeat about the prospects for Reggie and Maurice. Lately, the kids have been doing origami projects, folding paper into complex figures and shapes.

“Our kids are very persistent and don’t give up,” said Reginald Cureton. “Lead is still affecting them, but not to the point they can’t move forward.”

Contact TINA LAM: 313-222-6421 or tlam@freepress.com

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And,

“In the case of the latter reform strategy of declaring the facts irrelevant, New Jersey’s (and the Business Roundtable’s) Education Commissioner, Bret Schundler, provides a prime example. Because the reality does not fit the “terrible teacher” narrative that Governor Christie has adopted, two days ago Schundler denounced New Jersey Public Schools as a “wretched system” and the state’s #1 national ranking on the NAEP in both 4th and 8th grade reading and math as “irrelevant.” Facts don’t fit the ideology? Just declare them meaningless.”

From  the NYDailynews: “”Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction. The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years. In Albany, which boasts the state’s highest percentage of charter school enrollments, a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation has employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city’s nine charter schools.”

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* * *

by Kathleen Miller

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/13-8

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – A first-of-its-kind law bars public high schools in Maryland from automatically sending student scores on a widely used military aptitude test to recruiters, a practice that critics say was giving the armed forces backdoor access to young people without their parents’ consent.

[Al Goldis / AP Photo Toria Latnie is shown Wednesday, May 12, 2010, outside her home in Lansing, Mich. Latnie said a counselor at her son's Florida charter high school told seniors in late 2008 that a military aptitude test was a requirement for graduation. She researched the exam online and refused to allow her son to take the test. (AP) ]Al Goldis / AP Photo Toria Latnie is shown Wednesday, May 12, 2010, outside her home in Lansing, Mich. Latnie said a counselor at her son’s Florida charter high school told seniors in late 2008 that a military aptitude test was a requirement for graduation. She researched the exam online and refused to allow her son to take the test. (AP)

School districts around the country have the choice of whether to administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery exam, and ones that offer it typically pass the scores and students’ contact information directly to the military. Topics on the test range from math and reading to knowledge of electronics and automobiles.

The Maryland law, the first in the nation after similar California legislation was vetoed, was signed last month and bars schools from automatically releasing the information to military recruiters. Instead, students, and their parents if they are under 18, will have to decide whether to give the information to the military. The law takes effect in July. One other state, Hawaii, has a similar policy for its schools, but not a law.

Roughly 650,000 U.S. high school students took the exam in the 2008-2009 school year, and the Department of Defense says scores for 92 percent of them were automatically sent to military recruiters. In the fiscal year that ended in September, 7.6 percent of those who enlisted in the military used scores from the test as part of their applications.

Nancy Grasmick, Maryland Superintendent of Schools, said in a letter to lawmakers that the test and score analysis are “free services that public schools often utilize as part of their ongoing career development and exploration programs.” Grasmick took no position on the legislation in her letter and did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Defense Department spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said the data is used both to screen students’ enlistment eligibility and to determine their interests and skills for nonmilitary careers. Asked about criticism that the military is going around parents, Lainez said in an e-mail that “parents and other influencers are in the best position to help advise students of various career opportunities, and the pros and cons associated with each of the choices.”

Members of the Maryland Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, which pushed for the legislation, argued the military isn’t upfront about the test’s real purpose. Coalition member and high school teacher Pat Elder said he became involved in the issue after volunteering on a phone hot line for troubled soldiers. Many told him they hadn’t considered the military until a recruiter who’d seen their scores contacted them.

“I’ve spoken to ‘C’ or ‘D’ students who are called by a recruiter and told ‘Dude, you’re really good at this kind of stuff,’ and that’s what it takes for them to join,” said Elder, who teaches at the Muslim Community School in Potomac, Md. “There is an insidious, psychological element to these tests.”

While Maryland is the first state to pass a law prohibiting the automatic release of scores to military recruiters, some individual school districts elsewhere, including the Los Angeles school system, have policies to the same effect. Hawaii’s Department of Education implemented its statewide policy last year. Four Maryland counties – Howard, Frederick, Montgomery and Prince George’s – also blocked the direct release of scores to recruiters before the state law was passed.

State legislators in California passed a similar measure in 2008, but it was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

School districts in Maryland have had different policies for when and how they administer the roughly 3.5 hour multiple-choice exam. Some school districts, like rural Allegany County, only offer the test to students at a technical high school, while individual schools in the Baltimore City district can choose whether to administer the exam.

Maryland state senator Jamie Raskin, D-Montgomery, said he sponsored the bill partly because school districts’ approaches varied. He said constituents also told him they didn’t think local school districts knew their options.

“They thought they had to turn over information to recruiters,” Raskin said.

Some argued that the measure was antimilitary. Baltimore County Republican Sen. Andy Harris said the legislation gives students the impression that they should be skeptical of military careers.

“I think sending any message while we’re at war overseas that the military in any way is not an honorable profession is the wrong message to send,” Harris said.

Del. Sheila Hixson, D-Montgomery, sponsored the bill in the House, bristled at that argument.

“For me, it wasn’t the military piece, it was the parental permission,” Hixson said. “Parents didn’t know what was going on and children didn’t realize what was going on.”

Toria Latnie, who now lives in Michigan, said a counselor at her son’s Florida charter high school told seniors in late 2008 that the military aptitude test was a requirement for graduation. Latnie researched the exam online and refused to allow her son to take the test.

“I was angry, very angry,” said Latnie, a mother of five. “I felt lied to, deceived, like people were trying to go behind my back and give my child’s private information to the military.”

On the Net:

* Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery: http://www.asvabprogram.com

* National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy: http://www.asvabtest.org

© 2010 Associated Press

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RTTT is the "Carrot That Feels Like a Stick," says Mike Petrilli (of all people). He "can’t help but feel remorse for the death of federalism."

As I prepare for a talk at DePaul University tomorrow, I’m racing (ha!) to review the assessment program of Race to the Top. After having vented yesterday, several things stand out as politically significant in the assessment competition.

It is key to understand that the content of Race to the Top is bribery. While in the past the main criticism from various quarters was that much of NCLB’s testing requirements were “unfunded mandates;” today they are funded, but in an even more coercive way. Those who do the bidding of Obama, Duncan and a host of venture philanthropists, will receive tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. This itself is significant, for as I’ve noted before, bribery as a method signifies illegitimacy: “The use of the public treasury to bribe educators is an open admission that the path being imposed by the ruling elite cannot be justified” — that is, it is against prevailing public opinion. Despite all the talk about putting children first, kids do not want more testing, they are not craving to have their entire academic experience converted to numbers and letters in some federal database (as RTTT appears to aim to create), nor are they demanding teachers who only spend a few weeks preparing to enter the classroom, high on a mission inspired by the White Man’s Burden. Nor are children and youth narrowly interested in education for a career. So, as is often the case, things are not what they seem. The irrationality of the project requires that its political functions be explored. Eligibility requirements for receiving the competitive grants are a good place to begin.

An Analysis of Select Requirements

To be eligable for the Comprehensive Assessment System (the first assessment competition), the Executive Summary states:

Eligible applicants are consortia of States. To be eligible to receive an award under this category, an eligible applicant must—1. Include a minimum of 15 States, of which at least 5 States must be governing States (as defined in the NIA); 2. Identify in its application a proposed project management partner and provide an assurance that the proposed project management partner is not partnered with any other eligible applicant applying for an award under this category; and; 3. Submit assurances from each State in the consortium that, to remain in the consortium, the State will adopt a common set of college- and career-ready standards…

It will be important to thoroughly explore the degree to which this arrangement has precedent, but there are, it appears, some significant breaks with past practice. Unlike national associations like the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) — which is nonetheless playing an important role in creating national standards — RTTT requires placing some states as “governing” over others and require states in the consortia to sign “assurances” of compliance with the governing state and executive demands at the federal level to receive funding. Whereas CCSSO and possibly other associations are framed as advocacy organizations, this arrangement appears to create new governance structures. It appears to structure a new form of political inequality among states as well.

So what of these new governance structures? First, it is important to take seriously the use of the word consortium. Similar to the increasingly used concept of partnership, consortium is typically understood as “an association, typically of several business companies.” The social and political arrangement in which this makes sense is typically understood as belonging to the private realm of private enterprise, or that of “civil society” in the form of a professional association or “non-governmental agency” — as distinct from the state. But here we have the federal apparatus, under the direction of an executive, and not the law making body, forming through the use of bribes governing structures that do not obviously conform to the U.S. constitution or even state constitutions. What are we to make of a group of states forming a governing alliance that controls curricular content and standards for assessment whether teachers are teaching and students are learning that content, under the direction of executive bodies of the federal government? Will such alliances compete with each other? Will there be a Confederate consortium?

In the Federal Register notice, we find this interesting option:

Application Requirements: An eligible applicant’s application must—1. Indicate, consistent with 34 CFR 75.128, whether—(a) One member of the consortium is applying for a grant on behalf of the consortium; or (b) The consortium has established itself as a separate eligible legal entity and is applying for a grant on its own behalf; 2. Be signed by—(a) If one member of the consortium is applying for a grant on behalf of the consortium, the Governor, the State’s chief school officer, and, if applicable, the president of the State board of education from that State; or (b) If the consortium has established itself as a separate eligible legal entity and is applying for a grant on its own behalf, a representative of the consortium.

It is completely unclear, albeit on its face significant, what it means to allow for states to form a consortium that “has established itself as a separate eligible legal entity.” Such as a private corporation or non-for-profit institution?

Second, what might be most significant about this arrangement is not that it violates states rights (presumably the out for the Obama administration here is that Duncan is not actually forcing any state to apply for these grants) but rather that it restructures executive authority by creating “partnerships” between associations of states that relate as single entities to federal bodies, where these consortia appear to be de-linked both from federal and state law making bodies.

A related criteria for winning the competition is the role given to public institutions of higher education (IHEs). The Summary explains:

The Department gives eligible applicants competitive preference points based on the extent to which they have promoted collaboration and alignment between member States’ public elementary and secondary education systems and their public IHEs…Eligible applicants addressing this priority must provide, for each IHE or IHE system, a letter of intent that—(a) Commits the IHE or IHE system to participate with the consortium in the design and development of the consortium’s final high school summative assessments in mathematics and English language arts in order to ensure that the assessments measure college readiness; (b) Commits the IHE or IHE system to implement policies, once the final high school summative assessments are implemented, that exempt from remedial courses and place into credit-bearing college courses any student who meets the consortium-adopted achievement standard (as defined in the NIA) for each assessment and any other placement requirement established by the IHE or IHE system; and (c) Is signed by the State’s higher education executive officer (if the State has one) and the president or head of each participating IHE or IHE system.

This arrangement appears to have the effect of brining state public education systems under a governing apparatus of consortia of states — neither at the state level nor the federal level — that, in turn, interacts with the federal department of education. Of course, there is much to say about this — the implication of mandating the elimination of remedial courses for example — but that is for another time.

Another feature that suggests significant restructuring of executive power is this requirement stipulated under Consortium Governance. It notes that the “terms and conditions of the Memoranda of Understanding or other binding agreements executed by each member State” must include the “State’s commitment to and plan for identifying any existing barriers in State law, statute, regulation, or policy to implementing the proposed assessment system and to addressing any such barriers prior to full implementation of the summative assessment components of the system.”

Like Race to the Top requirements that bribe states into rewriting their laws — the most notable examples being the removal of caps on charter schools and rules limiting the use of test data for teacher evaluation purposes — this places executive bodies in a quasi-law making role. Along with venture philanthropy and other monopolies, governors and some legislatures are demanding changes to state law to increase state chances for winning Race to the Top funds. While a key point here is the clear focus on emasculating teachers unions and the spreading of massive disinformation about “putting kids first”, the point here is that this structure creates a new governing mechanism, neither at the level of state, nor clearly at the federal level; in some ways, it is not clear that the consortia to be formed are fully public in nature (e.g., a consortium that “established itself as a separate eligible legal entity”). It is important to understand that these changes are enabled by the ARRA, the result of the crimes of Wall Street (while some banks are “too big to fail” public institutions of historic proportion, such as public schools and universities, are being forced to fail).

Another clue that suggests limited public status for these governing structures is the manner in which RTTT insists on technical standards that are, generally speaking, open source or cross platform, while maintaining test secrecy. This ensures the public continues to be blocked from access to test content. Again the notice in the Federal Register is more helpful. It states:

In addition, we are requiring that eligible applicants receiving awards under either category in this competition develop assessment items and produce student data in a manner that is consistent with standards for interoperability, and that they make all assessment content (i.e., assessments and assessment items) developed with funds from this competition freely available to States, technology platform providers, or others that request it for purposes of administering assessments, consistent with States’ needs and with consortium or State requirements for test or item security.

Suggesting that public dollars are again being used to develop technology latter utilized by private entities, the notice reads:

We believe that these requirements will ensure that assessment content developed with funds from this competition is widely available, including to States that are not part of consortia receiving funds under this competition as well as to commercial organizations wishing to further develop, extend, and incorporate the content into assessment products intended for State use. Moreover, we believe that making assessment content freely available will spur innovation in assessment technology and enable technology providers to compete for States’ business on the basis of their developing efficient, effective, economical, and innovative assessment platforms.

It does not appear than that the issue is simply one of state’s rights and the death of federalism. Rather, it appears the very nature and scope of executive power is changing, and working to further distance governance from the public and its will.

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Well, let’s examine the first paragraph of the Executive Summary (since that is how far I got before I had to say something before my brain exploded):

Authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the Race to the Top Assessment Program provides funding to consortia of States to develop assessments that are valid, support and inform instruction, provide accurate information about what students know and can do, and measure student achievement against standards designed to ensure that all students gain the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in college and the workplace. These assessments are intended to play a critical role in educational systems; provide administrators, educators, parents, and students with the data and information needed to continuously improve teaching and learning; and help meet the President’s goal of restoring, by 2020, the nation’s position as the world leader in college graduates.

Wow! If you’re not struck by the incompetence, read it again. OK, wow!

First, validity of these new assessments is presented as a criteria that is somehow separate from providing “accurate information about what students know and can do”. Would you consider it possible to have a valid assessment that cannot provide information about what students know and can do in some domain (assuming for a moment developing such assessments is a straightforward and problem-free endeavor)?

More troubling is this gem: “measure student achievement against standards designed to ensure that all students gain the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in college and the workplace.” Measurement is not the same as comparison. And the phrase “measure student achievement against” is inept and awkward. Of course one might counter that the sentence means to convey that college and career standards should be used to measure student achievement prior to college, or that these standards should be used to validate measures of achievement. But such re-renderings do little to help. By way of some spell developed by Voldemort, this measurement spiral will ensure “all students gain the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in college and the workplace”. Can standards ensure things like this?

Oh, it’s actually quite easy, like, when, uh, the standard measure of weight is used to ensure everyone loses weight! If only obese youth had access to more bathroom scales!

And wouldn’t it be great if schools prepared everyone for college and the workplace? That won’t be a challenge, because all colleges and degree programs are essentially the same, and we all work (those of us who have the will to get a job in this free market utopia) in “the workplace.” I think it is well established, using scientifically based methods, that all workplaces are essentially the same and require the same skills. The psychological literature is bursting with studies demonstrating how easily skills transfer from one domain to the next…that’s why CEOs have proven to be such effective educators.

And, I’m really happy that the Obama administration wants to provide parents with “data and information needed to continuously improve teaching”. Hell, since they, and many teachers, will be out of work, they might as well do something for their country…

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The Broad Effect” is behind the recent events in Rhode Island (the Central Falls firings ), and in Detroit, where the Detroit Public School Board has just unanimously voted to file a second lawsuit against Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, saying the extra $145,000 in private foundation support he receives is an unlawful conflict of interest.

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The two developments — mass student and teacher actions opposing the privatization of public education and demanding a say over the form and content of education; Ravitch’s change of heart — suggest several questions. First is the degree to which these developments reflect and stand to block the ability of the forces pushing RTTT to remain creditable in the public eye. Second, because it is clear that RTTT as a roadmap for education reform will not be abandoned “no matter what the facts are”, what methods will be adopted to impose it? Will the existing RTTT methods to secure compliance to the Department of Education backfire? I’m thinking of methods such as forcing LEAs, unions, etc., to “show support” for state applications through memorandums? If the application fails, as many have, what will the forced alliance to King Arne give rise to, if not hatred for the king?

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New York’s 908-page application included some choice phrases. It promises, “An intense focus on curriculum and meaningful professional development based on student performance; data-drive instruction where teams develop individual student action plans based on data from formative and interim assessments; differentiated professional development and coaching based on data” (page 6).

It also declares that it will create “clear, content-rich, sequenced, spiraled, detailed curricular frameworks” (yes, five adjectives) for new assessments (page 10).

And, impressive for the sheer amount of jargon that could be wedged into a single sentence, New York’s app promises “to support differentiated professional development closely linked to student growth data, identify coaches and mentors using effectiveness ratings closely tied to student growth data, and build data-driven feedback loops between professional development, coaching/mentoring activities, and teacher effectiveness” (page 144).

But the problem here is not “jargon” (defined as special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand) as it is reasonable for a field to develop a language specific to its scope of practice. Rather, the problem is that the phrases selected for mockery reflect the tendency to be irrational. “Differential professional development” is, if the notion of professional development is to be taken seriously, is at best redundant. PD would necessary include the idea that the prescribed development would be targeted to address a particular scope of practice; that is, the word differential is added to make us feel as if something more sophisticated is offered. Or, because we’re sick of hearing about professional development, we’re now going to advance by adding adjectives, such as differential, or, to take another example, content-rich, as if we would advocate for content-poor curriculum.

But wouldn’t it be more helpful to think about the conditions that give rise to this outcome of irrational verbiage? Isn’t the RTTT fixation on competition (like that of AEI) part of the context that gives rise to the degrading of thought by rendering it one long commercial aimed at convincing someone to pony up the dough?

Is Hess’s alternative any better? Not only do we find a “jargon” emanating from the AEI, but this jargon does not represent an improvement, but a call for a complete destruction of public education in principle as well as in practice. Here the most important notion is that of “greenfield”, borrowed from the real-estate developers, who are, by the way, in on the charter school scam to syphon off public funds (see, for example, Schools Matter). We are to accept that our only choice is between the irrationalism of technocrats and the “freedom” for venture capital to destroy the “contaminated land” of public schooling and, without restriction, let it plow the “clean, undeveloped land (greenfield)” that results as the public treasury is open to the likes of KIPP and Uncommon Schools.

Unless reforms takes as their starting point the articulation of the rights and responsibilities of all teachers, students, parents and administrators, a rationale discourse about improving education will not be forthcoming. In its place will be more disinformation about the problem being lack of choice, standards, “security,” and so on. The problem is not one of a lack of choice, but rather a lack of popular political power over their schools and other social institutions. Choice schemes–”Greenfield”-style reforms in Hess’s language–will only result in denying more children the right to education, denying parents and communities control over their education, resulting in even more segregation and inequality.

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