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Lying to Sell School Choice

20 Oct

By Thomas Ultican 10/20/2024

Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and The 74 are lying about education gaps to promote “school choice.” The 74’s October 10 headline says, “In Cities With School Choice, Low-Income Kids Catching up to Wealthier Peers.” The article is based on a report from the PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools. The non-peer reviewed report assaults scholarship and is based on other billionaire paid nonsense.

Progressive Policy Institute

Tressa Pankovits, the Co-director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Public Schools, authored the propagandistic report. She came to PPI after 10 years as CEO of Vallas Group inc. Her PPI bio says the Vallas Group was, “led by esteemed education and public finance expert Paul Vallas.”  It should be noted Vallas is not universally esteemed in New Orleans, Philadelphia or Chicago where he did his best to privatize their schools and demean teachers.

PPI pushes conservative ideology while dressing it up like progressive philosophy. The biography of its founder, Will Marshal, states, “Founded in 1989, PPI started as the intellectual birthplace of the New Democrat and ‘Third Way’ movements, earning a reputation as President Bill Clinton’s ‘idea mill.”’

Lily Geismer’s book, Left Behind, claims that the Democrats failed attempt to solve inequality demonstrates how Bill Clinton “ultimately did more to sell free-market thinking than even Friedman and his acolytes” (Left Behind Page 13). She went on to note that Journalist Charles Peters called Clinton and his core supporters, neoliberals. Geismer noted:

“Peters meant it not as a pejorative but as a positive. … Neoliberals, he observed, ‘still believe in liberty and justice and a fair chance for all, in mercy for the afflicted and help for the down and out,’ but ‘no longer automatically favor unions and big government’” (Left Behind Page 18). [Emphasis added]

Historian Arthur Schlesinger labeled the DLC “a quasi-Reaganite formation” and accused them of “worshiping at the shrine of the free market” (Left Behind Page 46). DLC stands for Democratic Leadership Council which is also referred to as “New Democrats.”

David Osborne was an early fellow at PPI. He developed his view of entrepreneurial government into a 1992 book written with Ted Gaebler, called “Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector.” In their book the authors “made the case for what they called ‘entrepreneurial schools,’ which would compete among each other for customers” (A Wolf at the School House Door Page 84).  Under Osborne’s influence, “the DLC became one of the first political organizations to explore charter schools as a means of improving public education” (Left Behind Page 118). Osbourn became a senior advisor for Vice President Al Gore and founded PPI’s Reinventing America’s Public Schools. He is still its Director Emeritus.

Reinventing America’s Public Schools is aggressively for school privatization through charter schools. They are funded by the Walton Family Foundation (TIN: 13-3441466), the Broad Foundation (TIN: 95-4686318), and the Arnold Foundation (TIN: 26-3241764). These are the billionaires paying the freight and they want their deliverables.

Propaganda Masquerading as Research

There are two main claims being asserted in the report. One is that achievement gaps are shrinking in areas with significant school choice. The second claim is that charter schools do not negatively impact public schools. The 74 quotes Brandon Brown, CEO of the Mind Trust in Indianapolis, saying, “[A] lot of the evidence shows that the growth of high-quality charter schools does not come at the expense of the school district.” Both of these claims are farcical.

The PPI report claims:

“Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) has undertaken many local studies and, in 2023, released its third major national report in a series spread out over the past 30 years. In that massive study, CREDO researchers assessed the performance of students at 6,200 charter schools in 29 states between 2014 and 2019, confirming that charter-school students, on average, outperformed their peers in demographically-matched traditional public schools” (Report Page 6).

If we believed the CREDO results, the differences of 0.011 standard deviations in math and 0.028 standard deviations in reading are so small as to be meaningless. In addition, the CREDO methodology is highly suspect. Professor Andrew Maul of UC Santa-Barbara stated, “The study’s ‘virtual twin’ technique is insufficiently documented, and it remains unclear and puzzling why the researchers use this approach rather than the more accepted approach of propensity score matching.”

Economics writer, Andrea Gabor, noted the “study excludes public schools that do NOT send students to charters, thus introducing a bias against the best urban public schools, especially small public schools that may send few, if any, students to charters.” Schools sending less than 5 students to charters are excluded from the study. In addition, the CREDO study makes no adjustment for charter schools creaming students which means charters teach fewer special education and language learner students than do public schools.

Macke Raymond is the current director of CREDO. In 2015, her Hoover Institute Fellow’s profile said, “In partnership with the Walton Family Foundation and Pearson Learning Systems, Raymond is leading a national study of the effectiveness of public charter schools.” The 2023 report was their third in this series of studies. Her partners have too much skin in the game to be viewed as unbiased.

The PPI report looks at 10 cities “with more than one-third of students enrolled in bricks-and-mortar charter or charter-like schools.” PPI claims, “In every one of these cities, students have significantly closed the gap in outcomes between low-income students and all students statewide between 2010-11 and 2022-23” (Report Page 10). (Emphasis added)

In the beginning of the standardized testing craze, outcome gaps between racial groups were a big concern. Then Sean Reardon and his team at Stanford discovered that these gaps in testing results were more likely poverty driven. There is almost no information about where PPI got the data to support their claims. Most of the 10 cities studied are in states that have changed test types and venders since 2011. This makes the state tests somewhat difficult to use for comparing gap changes if the data required could be attained. However four of the cities PPI studied are in the NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) group; Cleveland, District of Columbia, Detroit and Philadelphia.

Using the NAEP data explorer to look at 8th grade math, the results for students receiving free or reduced lunch was found. Free and reduced lunch is generally believed to be a good indicator of poverty and 8th grade math is a subject that all students take. There was almost no change over the 12 years cited.

Only the national results saw a 3% improvement and the four studied cities saw testing declines of more that 1%. The PPI report states, “In all of these 10 cities, the data show that in the last decade (school years 2010-2011 through 2022-2023), low-income urban students closed the gap with statewide test score averages by 25-40% (Report Page 10). This is a surprising and difficult claim to accept. In fact, it looks like an outright lie.

Conclusion

It has been clear that The 74 was a billionaire propaganda rag ever since its original funding was provided by the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

PPI appears to be an organization stuck in its 1990s neoliberal ideology with their misguided belief that markets are always the superior path to improvement.

Both organizations seem to be missing out on ethics. Here they have joined in a lie to sell school choice.

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Science of Learning; an Education Fraud

2 Oct

By Thomas Ultican 10/2/2024

On September 24, The 74 headline read, “What Happens When a 48K-Student District Commits to the ‘Science of Learning’ – In Frederick County, Maryland, test scores rose, achievement gaps shrank and even veteran educators slowly embraced the decidedly not-faddish fix.” This statement is mostly baloney used to sell the “science of learning.”

The article opens with a new first grade teacher discussing her next day’s math lesson with the school’s principal, Tracy Poquette. The third paragraph says,

“Poquette recommended the whiteboards. ‘You’re going to ask them to hold them up,’ Poquette coached Able, miming holding a whiteboard in the air. Then you can see their answers, and how they got to that. Every student is responding.”’

This seems fine but it is hardly innovative. This technique comes from the 20th century or maybe even the 19th century. The next paragraph states, “The sessions are meant to accelerate student learning and take some of the guesswork out of becoming an effective teacher, part of a larger district plan to incorporate research from the fields of neuroscience, educational psychology and cognitive science — often referred together broadly as the ‘science of learning.’”

They are selling baseless malarkey. Neuroscience and cognitive science still do not provide much usable insight into how students learn or what the best teaching methods are.

The claim of rising test scores is deliberately misleading. The scores may have risen a little but this is a case in which the cause is pretty clear. In statistics, the r-value correlation has a value between o and 1 for determining the effects of different inputs on education testing results. An r = 0 means there in no relationship and an r = 1 means the input is 100% determinative. Inputs like teacher, curriculum design, class size, etc. can be evaluated. The only input ever found with more than o.3 r-value is family wealth at a 0.9 r-value. Between 2021 and 2022, Frederick County, Maryland had “the largest net positive change in total income in the state.” As indicated by statistical analysis, of course test scores raised some.

These fraudulent claims about the “science of learning” are being financed by wealthy people wanting to implement competency based education (CBE). With its concentration on developing mastery of small discrete information bites, CBE makes kids learning at screens more possible. Since 2010, the annual GSV+ASU conference, which is a big deal with tech billionaires, has been striving toward this goal. At their 2023 conference in San Diego, Carnegie and ETS announced a new partnership to create functional testing for competency based education (CBE).

GSV (Global Silicon Valley) appears to have convinced Tim Knowles and the Carnegie Foundation to abandon the Carnegie Unit to open the way for CBE based testing and badges.

The Claims and Propaganda

The proponents of the “science of learning” claim that Pestalozzi, Herbart and Dewey, the fathers of progressive education, were wrong. They tell us that “problem based education” is counterproductive and that discovery approaches are harming children. They claim that direct instruction and drilling small bits of information to mastery are what children need.

Trish Jha, a research fellow at the Center for Independent Studies in Australia, just published a more than 15,000 word essay explaining why the “science of learning” is needed. She claims:

“Australian education needs to position the science of learning as the foundation for policy and practice.”

“Unfortunately, key pillars of Australian education policy do not reflect the science of learning, due to the far-reaching impacts of progressive educational beliefs dating back to the 18th century.”

“These beliefs include that:

    • Students learn best when they themselves guide their learning and it aligns with their interest;
    • Rote learning is harmful;
    • Learning should be based on projects or experiences, and that doing this will result in critical and creative thinkers.”

“But these beliefs are contradicted by the science of learning.”

Ms. Jha asserts, “The teaching approach best supported by the evidence is explicit instruction of a well-sequenced, knowledge-focused curriculum.” She sites E. D. Hirsh as one of her experts supporting this thinking.

It is part of a worldwide effort by wealthy people to digitized education under the cover of “science of learning”. In 2018, the Center for American Progress (CAP) wrote:

“This brief builds on the growing momentum for both the science of learning and school redesign. Last month, for instance, the XQ Institute released a policy guide for states on how best to redesign their schools. The document argued, among other things, that students should be able to learn at their own pace, progressing as they demonstrate mastery of key concepts.”

And CAP went on to quote XQ:

“[Competency-based education] isn’t about replacing what goes on in the classroom with less-demanding experiences outside of it. This is about integrating innovative approaches to teaching in the classroom with opportunities for students to develop practical, concrete skills in real world settings. And it’s about awarding credit for learning—demonstrated learning—no matter where or when the learning takes place.”

The XQ institute is the creation of noted anti-public school and teacher disparaging billionaire, Laurene Powell Jobs.

For 50 years, mastery-based education now called CBE has been a major flop. Established on the mind-numbing drill and skill approach, CBE undermines authentic learning. It has never worked.

Deans for Impact, a Billionaire Created Example

The Deans for Impact Supporters Page

Teach for America (TFA) is viewed by many people as the billionaires’ army for school privatization and the New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF) is the Swiss army knife of public school privatization. Deans for Impact (DFI) was created in 2015 with personnel from TFA and NSVF.

DFI founder, Benjamin Riley, was a policy director at NSVF. Riley stepped down as executive director of DFI in August 2022 and was replaced by another NSVF alumnus, Valarie Sakimura. Francesca Forzani, the current board president, spent 4 years as a TFA teacher in Greenville, Mississippi. The list of people from public school privatization promoting organizations who have served on the DFI board of directors is extensive:

Supporters of DFI have been very generous since the founding in 2015. The last year for which tax records are available was 2022. Federal tax forms 990-PF show:

  • Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation (TIN: 56-2618866)  $3,482,504
  • Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation (TIN: 73-1312965)  $2,135,000
  • Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (TIN: 36-4336415)  $2,375,000
  • The Joyce Foundation (TIN: 36-6079185)  $2,400,000
  • Carnegie Corporation of New York (TIN: 13-1628151) $875,000

These are huge sums of money but not for billionaires.

The Carnegie Corporation did not contribute to DFI until Timothy Knowles became president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2021; probably not a coincidence.

Deans for Impact states:

“DFI believes all teacher-candidates should know the cognitive-science principles explored in The Science of Learning. And all educators, including new teachers, should be able to connect those principles to their practical implications for the classroom.”

Of course cognitive scientists do not agree on these principles and the neuroscience pitch is fantasy, but DFI is coming through with its deliverables.

Deans for Impact is just one small example of the many organizations billionaires have created to do their bidding.

Conclusions

The “science of learning” is another scam to defeat progressive education and replace it with kids at screens earning badges. Unfortunately, billionaire money distorts reality. “Science of learning” and “science of reading” are frauds not science. They are oligarch created deceptions bringing bad pedagogy and the end of free universal public education.

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Moneyed People Attack Wilmington Schools

23 Sep

By Thomas Ultican 9/23/2024

July 10th the Christina school board voted, at 2:45 AM, to remove popular Superintendent Dan Shelton. The seven member board split 4 to 3. It seems that Shelton’s opposition to allowing charter schools to take over the district motivated the vote. The Christina school district serves the small Delaware cities of Wilmington, Newark and their outskirts. It is a modest sized district with about 14,000 students. The unseen force behind the ouster was the DuPont family.

The attack by billionaires on schools in Delaware is similar to harm visiting public education throughout the nation. The local rich guy sets up tax exempt “charities” and uses them to undermine local schools. The “charities” hire young ambitious and talented people to lead the effort. Looking behind the scenes in Delaware illuminates the undermining of public schools nationwide.

Board President Donald Patton was joined by Vice President Alethea Smith-Tucker, Y.F. Lou, and Dr. Naveed Baqir in voting to oust the Superintendent two months before the new school year begins. It is alleged that they are the compromised four. In a local pod cast, Highland Bunker, board member Doug Manley reported that Matt Clifford, who dropped out of the recent school board election, was offered support if he agreed to vote with Board President Patton. Manley also speculated that Y. F. Lou received the same offer.

Trustee Manley stated that in his view the only reason Shelton was removed from office was because of his opposition to letting charter schools parcel out the district. It is notable that in 2022, Shelton was named Delaware State Superintendent of the Year.

Longwood Foundation

The Longwood Foundation is not called the DuPont Foundation because it was originally established in 1937 by Pierre DuPont to support Longwood Gardens. A tax reform act in 1969 caused a change and, Longwood Gardens, Inc. was formed to finance the gardens. The Longwood Foundation remained in existence to “principally support charitable organizations” and push forward the DuPont agenda.

Over the last decade, the foundation has spent $1,812,200 to support Reading Assist Inc. whose web page says:

“Reading Assist provides high-dosage tutoring for students in grades K-3 in the lowest 25% for reading proficiency, with a focus on serving in schools where there is the highest need.

“We recruit, train, and embed AmeriCorps members – known as Reading Assist Fellows – willing to commit a school year of service to provide our accredited, one-on-one intervention program to struggling readers.”

Reading Assist is a science of reading (SoR) advocate whose founder has ties to the dyslexia community. AmeriCorps has helped provide Teach for America (TFA) training and recruits. In other words, these organizations come with privatization blemishes. Many researchers believe SoR is bad science promoted by wealthy people and publishing companies while TFA is their army.

Longwood is still a DuPont family run organization. According to the 2022 tax form 990PF (TIN: 51-0066734), John DuPont is the current president and Margaret DuPont is Vice President. The tax records also show that in the last decade they have provided the fake education graduate school, Relay Graduate School, $1,300,000.

The Foundation concentrates its spending into the Wilmington area and does very little spending nationally. So their spending of more than $15,000,000 on charter schools in the last decade has made a huge impact locally. Margaret and one other DuPont family member also sit on the board of the smaller Chelsea Foundation (TIN: 51-6015638) which also provides grants to charter schools. It is this drive to privatize the Christina School District that seems to have led to firing a respected and popular administrator.

In 2017, Indiana scholars Jim Scheurich, Gayle Cosby, and Nathanial Williams posted an article on Diane Ravitch’s blog that outlined the model used by billionaires to gain control of local schools.  Point five of their rich guy privatization model is, “Development of a network of local organizations or affiliates that all collaborate closely on the same local agenda.”

First State Educate, Inc.

First State Educate’s 2019 form 990 (TIN: 84-2554991) reports its founding officers as President: John DuPont, Treasure: James Kelly and Secretary: Jocelyn Stewart. Since then, the Longwood Foundation has gifted it $731,100. In other words, First State Educate is fueled by DuPont money.

Their documents reveal:

“First State Educate/Action Fund (FSE/AF) were founded in 2019 to catalyze radical change in education by activating the power of Delawareans. In the four years since its founding, FSE/AF has helped 16 game-changing leaders be elected to school boards throughout the state, including five school board members enrolling 45,000 students who now serve in leadership positions. FSE/AF also helped propel numerous initiatives to change the conditions of teaching and learning, including the Wilmington Learning Collaborative, RISE UP Delaware and FaCE coalitions.

The reason there are two organizations is that First State Educate is the tax exempt “charity” and Action Fund is a political organizations that is not tax exempt.

There was only one change in the board leadership shown on the 2023 tax report; Jocelyn Stewarts position became Interim Executive Director. The form says she put in 40 hours a week in this position with no pay. She is a busy person. When she was appointed to the board of trustees for Delaware State University, the school reported, “Ms. Stewart is the chair of the board chairperson (sic) for Teach for America Delaware, the vice chair of the East Side Charter School, a trustee for Christiana Care Health Services and has served on a number of State of Delaware committees.”

Stewart comes from the banking industry where she worked in the Events Marketing Department of First USA Bank. In 2000, when Barclaycard US was founded she developed their community strategies.

This picture from the NPR affiliate Delawarepublic.org shows Delaware Senator, Chris Coons, on the left and Jocelyn Stewart on the right holding Barclay’s gift to EastSide Charter School. It is unknown why the Democratic senator is supporting public education privatization but he clearly is.

Stewart was replaced as director of First State Educate in July 2023 by Julia Keleher.

While serving as Secretary of Education in Puerto Rico, Keleher who is not Puerto Rican, secured a new law allowing for charter schools and vouchers plus the closure of hundreds of schools.

On December 28, 2016, Keleher was appointed Puerto Rico Secretary of Education by Governor-elect Ricardo Rosselló who became so hated he was driven from office in 2019. The appointment was just a few months before hurricane Maria hit. Keleher also became disliked as was demonstrated by San Juan protesters loudly chanting, “Julia go home!”

Things went sideways for Keleher. December 17, 2021, a federal judge in Puerto Rico sentenced her with six months prison, 12 months house arrest and a $21,000 fine. She plead guilty in June to two felony counts involving conspiracies to commit fraud. Almost as soon as she finished her prison term, she was hired by First State Educate. Now she is the executive director.

Conclusion

Rich people in Delaware are working to privatize the public schools in Wilmington and environs. The school board voting 4-3 to fire Dan Shelton is a result these efforts. It appears the school board has been completely corrupted with a compromised four.

WHYY reported, “[Naveed] Baqir and the private school he co-founded are under scrutiny concerning invoices submitted to the school district.”

Delawarpublic.org noted that in June the Department of Justice (DOJ) stated “that the board has made repeated Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) violations …”

On top of the state (DOJ) ruling, it seems that Dan Shelton has firm grounds for a lawsuit. The former Christina School District Attorney, James McMakin, severed ties with the board and said his firm is working to finalize a lawsuit against the district on the superintendent’s behalf. Shelton’s attorneys claim that he was discharged without a pre-determination hearing and he has constitutional rights. When still representing the district, McMakin told them “they’re acting lawlessly.”

It appears that the board members who voted to oust the superintendent are not protected from the lawsuit.

There is a good chance some of this injustice will be righted but damage has been done to the Christina School District. The people of Wilmington and Newark are in jeopardy of having their schools stolen by wealth neighbors including the DuPont family.

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The Undermining of Rhode Island Public Schools

23 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/23/2024

Gina Raimondo, Rhode Island’s unpopular governor, appointed the clearly unqualified Angélica Infante-Green as Commissioner of Education, in 2019. That was the year before Joe Biden selected Raimondo as Secretary of the Treasury. Infante-Green’s qualifications amounted to recommendations from New York’s Joel Klein and Jeb Bush. She was a former Teach For America (TFA) teacher in New York city who had never led a district nor been a school principal. Her first action on the job was to take over the Providence school district, the state’s largest.

Like all corporate sponsored “reformers,” Infante-Green took to propaganda rag, The 74, and updated on when, if ever, Providence will exit state control. However, Rhode Island exiting state control matters less than in most states with elected school boards because Mayors run schools. Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza officially petitioned the state to take over his schools, one of the poorer school districts in America. Politicos decided that schools were “failing” because of poor test scores.

Besides poverty, Providence’s schools are almost 70% latinx with 40% language learners. Famous educators like Pestalozzi, Herbert and Dewey would not have gotten test scores acceptable to the local business community. It was a case of testing to privatize, without care for public education and little comprehension of teaching or learning.

Hope High School in Providence

Infante-Green did not actually give much information about her plans for turning over management of the Providence school district to the city. She only shared:

“We said that in 2024, we’d look at how much progress has been made. But when that was decided in 2019, nobody anticipated a pandemic.”

Does she envision semi-permanent state control?

Feeding Corporate Friends

Part of the requirements in Rhode Island for a school to exit state receivership is an independent review. Of course, Infante-Green did not ask Brown University, Providence College or University of Rhode Island to conduct the review. She contracted with Massachusetts-based consulting firm, SchoolWorks, to lead an independent review.

SchoolWorks has a long history of supporting charter schools and privatization of public education. A tab on their web page advertises the only two categories of training they offer: For Charter School Authorizers and For Charter School Founders.

About For Charter School Founders, SchoolWorks says:

“Behind every successful charter school is a passionate group of individuals who dedicated their time and talent to envisioning a new school, garnering community support, and crafting a thoughtful and comprehensive charter school application. These are challenging, time-consuming tasks; and we celebrate pioneers like you for your commitment to innovating education.”

A link on the LittleSis data base provides some historical background for SchoolWorks. The CEO in 2016, Scott Blasdale, was a founding board member of the Massachusetts Charter School Association. He also was executive director and founding teacher of Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter Public School.

In the period that Richard Daley and Rham Emanuel were mayors of Chicago, SchoolWorks held consulting contracts for local public schools. They also consulted for KIPP schools, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and National Heritage Academies. The billion dollar Kauffman Foundation’s (EIN: 43-6064859) spending aligns with funding by Arnold, Dell, Gates and Walton, including generous gifts to TFA, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, TNTP and Digital Promise.

Testing to Privatize

Johns Hopkins University was integral to the attack on public schools in Providence, Rhode Island. In May 2019, at the invitation of Infante-Green, Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy led a review of the Providence Public School District. The Partnership for Rhode Island, a group of local business leaders, funded the review.

The Johns Hopkins study was commissioned in May and presented in June. Based on the report, Providence Mayor Elorza officially petitioned the state to takeover Providence Public School District on July 19, 2019.

This request was based on testing data and Johns Hopkins not so unbiased report. In 2020, the Institute for Education policy at Johns Hopkins joined Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change to write a paper, calling for more standardized testing. This collaboration clearly indicated a penchant for school privatization and a tilt against public schools.

Adopting the Science of Reading

Infante-Green defended her school takeover methods stating:

“We have something called the Right to Read Act [which requires teachers to be trained in the science of reading]. By 2025, our K-8 teachers will all be trained, but we’re at about 75 percent.”

Science of Reading (SoR) is much more about profits and control than good teaching. SoR is not based on sound science and, more accurately, should be called “How to Use Anecdotes to Sell Reading Products.”

Professor Maren Aukerman, currently Werklund Research Professor at the University of Calgary, focuses on literacy education and democratic citizenship. She previously served on the faculty at Stanford University and University of Pennsylvania. Her recently published paper in the Literary Research Association on work by Goldstein, Hanford and others promoting SoR noted:

“The problem is not with recognizing that teaching phonics can play a facilitative role in having children learn to read; that insight is, indeed, important, if not particularly new. The problem is that this narrative distorts the picture to the point that readers are easily left with a highly inaccurate understanding of the so-called ‘science of reading.”’

Professor Paul Thomas of Furman University, with a deep background in teaching and education research, criticized of American Public Media’s Emily Hanford writing:

“As I have pointed out numerous times, there is a singular message to Hanford’s work; she has never covered research that contradicts that singular message.

“For example, not a peep about the major study out of England that found the country’s systematic phonics-first policy to be flawed, suggesting a balanced approach instead.

“And not a peep about schools having success with one of Hanford’s favorite reading programs to demonize.”

Nancy Bailey is an expert in special education and early reading instruction. In a recent posting, she declared:

“A troubling feature of the Science of Reading (SoR) is the connection between those who believe in the power of phonemes (and more) and those who want to privatize public schools. The old NCLB crowd has been rejuvenated and seems onboard with digital instruction replacing public schools and teachers.“

Infante-Green’s claim that SoR is something wonderful and positive for public schools in Rhode Island is malarkey. It is a giveaway to corporations that harms students and undermines educators.

An Intriguingly Strange Claim

Infante-Green is quoted by The 74 stating:

“What’s interesting about Providence is that about 19,000 children apply to charter schools and there are only 22,000 students in the district. So they want charter schools.”

This assertion makes no sense. While it is not surprising that charter school enrollment in Rhode Island increased, the most recent (2021) available enrollment data showed 10,547 charter students. Claiming 19,000 student applications for privatized schools in Providence alone strains credibility.

Rhode Island’s Commissioner of Education promotes privatization.

It is true that since the pandemic, student enrollments have dropped and chronic absenteeism has grown throughout the nation. In Providence, both of these have soared. Even Central Falls, the most impoverished school district in Rhode Island, had a significantly lower absentee rates and better attendance than Providence. Commissioner of Education, Angelica Infante-Green, took over Providence schools five years ago, making no effective action while dropout rates climbed, students disappeared and many scholars coming to class sporadically.

Clearly, these schools would be in a better state if her takeover never happened.

It is time to quit playing privatization games with the public school system and return them to professionals in the district.

State takeovers have a nationwide record of failure and Providence is adhering to that history.

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All Charter District Opens Public School

9 Jun

By Thomas Ultican 6/9/2024

New Orleans Public Schools, aka Orleans Parish School District (OPSD), became America’s first and only all charter school district in 2017. After hurricane Katrina, the state took over all but five schools in the city. When management was transferred to charter organizations in 2017, OPSD officially became an all charter district. This August, the city will open district-operated Leah Chase K-8 School, ending the all charter legacy.

According to Superintendent Avis Williams, the infrastructure required for the district to run Leah Chase will make it easier to open future district-run schools. OPSD will become both a charter school authorizer and regular school district. There is hope that New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA) is pulling out of an abyss and tending towards a healthy public school system.

All-Charter NOLA Doomed from the Beginning

Senator Joseph Bouie Jr. equated the NOLA school system to the “Tuskegee syphilis experiment.” Professor Bouie, former administrator of Southern University at New Orleans, had good reason for this analogy. At Tuskegee University, black men with syphilis were given no treatment even after penicillin was shown to be effective. Dozens of men died and their wives, children and untold number of others were infected. NOLA black residents had their community schools taken away and replaced by privatized schools, often miles away. This “experiment” stole their rights and bestowed the public schools to private actors.

The design of the privatized system was flawed. A 2018 study by Education Research Alliance found student’s average one-way school bus trip took 35 minutes and pickup times began at 5:30 AM.

Public investment in education is widely viewed as the key to America’s success. Since the 19th century, communities have developed around local public schools. This opportunity was taken from NOLA neighborhoods.

Rules for NOLA charter schools do not create the stability needed for establishing community schools. Louisiana set up the rules with ACT-91 when returning schools to the NOLA school board in 2014. Provisions concerning enrollment, funding and discipline are included in the act plus charter operators control staffing, curriculum and length of both school day and year. The OPSD Superintendent makes decisions on transferring charters to other operators, renewing or cancelling charters.

Louisiana’s state takeover law required schools scoring below average to be closed. If this were real, half of the schools in the state would be closed every year. Instead, arbitrary state performance scores based on testing data, attendance, dropout rates and graduation rates were established. Similar ratings are used to evaluate NOLA charter schools. The nature of privatized schools and testing results led to almost half of the charter schools created being closed.

The NOLA school enrollment system allows parents to research the 100 schools and apply for up to eight of them. The algorithm selects the school from one of the eight if space is available. It is not uncommon for students to ride a bus past schools within walking distance of their homes. This complicated system is driving segregation.

For many education professionals, this system looked like a sure failure from the beginning. Communities could not develop around their schools and the schools would not be stable; important aspects of quality public education.

Another problem coming out of the school privatization experiment is a large swath of the city, known as New Orleans East, has lots of students but few schools.

The All Charter District is a Failure

In 2021, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona visited OPSD. He heard first-hand the growing disillusionment with the all charter system. Four of the six parents told him they wanted to go back to neighborhood schools. Parents complained about Teach for America, placing unqualified teachers in schools and the One App process for not offering school choice.

Senator Bouie wrote a two-page paper, “A Moral Imperative and Case For Action”, stating: “After spending 6 Billion dollars of tax payers’ money to become the only all-Charter system in the State, a staggering 73% of our children are not functioning at grade level, compared to 63% in 2005, when the State took control of over 100 of our schools.”

He also shared:

“In other words, fellow citizens, this 15-year flawed experiment has yielded no best practices identified to improve student and school performance, no State protocol for Charter Law Compliance, and no student performance improvement. It has, however, yielded other devastating consequences for our children and our community.”

He mentioned the 26,000 students between the ages of 16 and 24 who went missing. The privatized charter school system was unable to account for them which is expected and natural for a public school district.

Bouie called for ending busing, “They are transported past a neighborhood school to attend a failing school across town” and eliminating the ineffective One App central enrollment system claiming, “It has created inequities by Race and Class and admissions by chance (lottery) and not choice.”

Raynard Sanders who has over forty years of experience in teaching, education administration and community development, said the charter experiment has “been a total disaster in every area.” He asserted NOLA had “the worst test scores since 2006, the lowest ACT scores, and the lowest NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores.”

Based on a 2015 study by the Center for Popular Democracy, Sanders declared, “Charter schools have no accountability and, fiscally, charter schools in New Orleans have more fraud than existed in the OPSD (Orleans Parish School District).” The fraud claim was used by the state in 2003 against OPSD to begin taking schools.

Loyola University Law Professor Bill Quigley stated, “NOLA reforms have created a set of schools that are highly stratified by race, class, and educational advantage; this impacts the assignment to schools and discipline in the schools to which students are assigned.”

He contended, “There is also growing evidence that the reforms have come at the expense of the city’s most disadvantaged children, who often disappear from school entirely and, thus, are no longer included in the data.”

Professor of Economics, Doug Harris, and his team at Tulane University are contracted to study school performance in New Orleans. Harris claims schools have improved since Hurricane Katrina. However Professor Bruce Baker of Rutgers University disagrees. He noted that the school system is not only smaller but less impoverished. Many of the poorest families left and never returned. So the slightly improved testing results are not real evidence of school improvement.

The latest testing data from 2023 saw NOLA public schools receive failing grades but based on Louisiana’s new progress indicator, the district received a C, meaning an F for assessments and an A in growth.

In a letter to the editor, former OPSD superintendent, Barbara Ferguson, stated:

“The state took over 107 of New Orleans’ 120 public schools and turned them into charter schools. Last year, 56 of New Orleans’ 68 public schools had scores below the state average. Thus, after nearly 20 years, over 80% of New Orleans schools remain below the state average. This charter school experiment has been a failure.”

Final Words

In 2006, with the school board out of the road and RSD in charge, philanthropists Bill Gates, Eli Broad and others were ready to help.

Naomi Klien’s 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, labeled these school reforms, a prime example of “disaster capitalism”, which she described as “orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities.” She also observed, “In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans’ school system took place with military speed and precision.”

Desires of New Orleans residents were ignored. Neoliberal billionaires were in charge. In all the excitement, few noticed that these oligarchs had no understanding of how public education functions. They threw away 200 years of public school development and replaced it with an experiment. The mostly black residents in the city were stripped of their rights.

Thousands of experienced black educators were fired and replaced by mostly white Teach For America teachers with 5 weeks of training. Instead of stable public schools, people were forced into unstable charter schools. Instead of professional administration, market forces drove the bus!

Clearly, the all charter school system is a failure.

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Reselling NCLB … No Kidding!

1 May

By Thomas Ultican 5/1/2024

Neoliberals joined with libertarians to “reform” public education. Their tools were big money and propaganda distributed by media outlets like The 74, support by The Walton family (EIN 13-3441466) and Bill Gates (EIN 56-2618866). This year, regular columnist for The 74, Chad Aldeman, is trying to claim that lifting No Child Left Behind (NCLB) school accountability sanctions is responsible for the public school testing “data decline”.

Aldeman came east from the University of Iowa, with his BA in Public Policy, to gain a Masters in Public Policy from William and Mary University. His first job in 2008 was with the neoliberal Education Sector which states, “Since our founding in 2005, Education Sector has established our expertise in key issue areas—including educational choice, human capital, K–12 accountability, and higher education—and gained credibility as an independent leader in the field.” (emphases added)

After three years, Aldeman joined Arne Duncan’s Department of Education as a Confidential Assistant and left the Department in 2012 for neoliberal oriented Bell Weather Education Partners as a Principal, working there until 2020.

Diane Ravitch said of Bell Weather in 2016:

“Bellwether, co-founded by Andrew Rotherham, is a leading force in the corporate reform movement. Rotherham has been a columnist for TIME. Currently he is on the board of Campbell Brown’s THE 74.

“Among its clients: TN Achievement School District, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, NewSchools Venture Fund, Rhode Island Department of Education, Stranahan Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, Stand for Children, CEE-Trust, Goodwill Education Initiatives, Harmony Public Schools (Gulen charter schools), TNTP, Rocketship Education (charter chain), KIPP, IDEA charter schools, The Mind Trust, Chiefs for Change, TeachPlus, and the Black Alliance for Education Options.”

 I used this quote, because Bellweather’s list of clients has gotten much larger, extra disgusting but not more illuminating.

Bottom-line: Aldeman is steeped in anti-public school dogma.

Going on the Attack

 Aldeman’s latest piece for The 74 is called “Gaps Widening Between Indiana’s Highest- and Lowest-Performing Students,” claiming that since approximately 2013 education outcomes as measured by test scores were bad. He stated gaps between highest- and lowest-performing students were widening while overall scores declined and this was not just an Indiana problem but a national one.

The following is one of his graphs, Indiana 4th grade reading outcomes.

Chad Aldeman Graph from The 74

In the article he stated from 2003 to 2015, the average gains went up by 7 points and from 2015 to 2022, the average losses were 10 points. What he did not mention was where the test data came from and what its maximum scale was. If this happened to be a testing performance based on a 1,000 point scale, a 10 point change is fairly meaningless even if you believe in standards-based testing.

To check if there was any reality to Aldeman’s graph, I interrogated data from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Using free lunch as a proxy for low-performing students, both national data and Indiana data for 4th grade reading was graphed. NAEP, known as the nation’s report card, has given the same type of reading exams since 1992. Indiana changed its ELA testing regime in 2018 which makes evaluating data from 2010 when the last testing method was adopted, difficult to impossible. It lacks continuity.

Reading data is scored on a 500 point scale. Scores above 250 and below 190 are meaningless for the 4th grade reading test. Testing score gaps between students eligible for free lunch and those not, in the US, wavered between 26 and 28 points. In Indiana, it varied from 20 to 23 points with one outlier in 2019 at 27 points. The gap between top and bottom has been unchanged within a 3 or 4 point range. Since 1992, 4th grade reading data average for the nation has wiggled up and down within a ten point range. The first test data in 1992 came in at a 217 points average and was also 217 points in 2022.

 From 1970 to 1992, America’s schools showed slow but steady improvement in education-testing outcomes but since the era of standards, testing and accountability, improvement basically stopped. Education, run by billionaires and politicians instead of educators, failed to improve testing outcomes.

What Happened?

Alderman stated in his latest article that it is not just an Indiana problem but that “49 of 50 states, the District of Columbia and 17 out of 20 of the large cities that participated in NAEP … saw a widening of their achievement gap over the last decade.” He did not share which tests showed widened achievement gaps nor which cohorts were compared. NAEP reports on reading scores for 4th and 8th grade do not show a significant change in scoring gaps between Black and White students and comparisons in other ethnic groups also were steady.

After asking what has caused this (non-existent) achievement gap increase, Alderman posited several possible reasons: Common Core state standards (CCSS), per-pupil spending, technology and social media. He said the timing for CCSS fit but did not explain why states where CCSS was never adopted had the same problem. For per-pupil spending, he claimed that more money was getting to classrooms, which defies education-spending reports, making his claim a little shady. For technology and social media, he said other countries with similar problems, did not see testing declines … a declaration made with no evidence cited.

He finally made his real point, “I argue that the weakening of school accountability pressures after the No Child Left Behind Act was passed is responsible for a large portion of the drop.” Those of us, who were in classrooms and witnessed the test-and-punish philosophy damage to public education, disagree. How many great public schools were labeled “failures and closed” because they existed in low income zip codes?

If this decline were real, wouldn’t the privatization of public education be the most likely culprit? Charter schools came first followed by vouchers and more charter schools. Data clearly shows that vouchers harm student-testing performance. Furthermore both charter schools and voucher schools leech money from public education budgets.

Conclusions

The 74 was founded in 2015 by former CNN news anchor, Campbell Brown, along with Michael Bloomberg’s education advisor, Romy Drucker. Its original funding came from the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation,  Walton Family Foundation, Doris and Donald Fisher Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Since then, it has been the vehicle for spreading the billionaire message of privatization and undermining public schools.

Some billionaires see the non-sectarian nature of public education as a threat to their dreams of a Christian theocracy. Others are libertarians that oppose free universal public education, believing everyone should pay one’s own way and not steal people’s private properties using taxation. The Neoliberals are convinced that education should be run like a business and react to market forces.

Responding to the mission of The 74, Chad Aldeman’s series of articles, like those of many of his colleagues, are pure propaganda, shaping data to support his neoliberal ideology instead of honestly reporting facts. Unfortunately this kind of fake “journalism” is flooding email boxes and web pages throughout America every day.

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Jobs’ Reading Scam

10 Apr

By Thomas Ultican 4/10/2024

Laurene Powell Jobs controls Amplify, a kids-at-screens education enterprise. In 2011, she became one of the wealthiest women in the world when her husband, Steve, died. This former Silicon Valley housewife displays the arrogance of wealth, infecting all billionaires. She is now a “philanthropist”, in pursuit of both her concerns and biases. Her care for the environment and climate change are admirable but her anti-public school thinking is a threat to America. Her company, Amplify, sells the antithesis of good education.

I am on Amplify’s mailing list. April third’s new message said,

“What if I told you there’s a way for 95% of your students to read at or near grade level? Maybe you’ve heard the term Science of Reading before, and have wondered what it is and why it matters.”

Spokesperson, Susan Lambert, goes on to disingenuously explain how the Science of Reading (SoR) “refers to the abundance of research illustrating the best way students learn to read.”

This whopper is followed by a bigger one, stating:

“A shift to a Science of Reading-based curriculum can help give every teacher and student what they need and guarantee literacy success in your school. Tennessee school districts did just that and they are seeing an abundant amount of success from their efforts.”

A shift to SoR-based curriculum is as likely to cause harm as it is to bring literacy success. This was just a used-car salesman style claim. On the other hand, the “abundance of success” in Tennessee is an unadulterated lie. National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) tracks testing over time and is respected for education testing integrity. Tennessee’s NAEP data shows no success “from their efforts.” Their reading scores since 2013 have been down, not a lot but do not demonstrate an “abundance of success”.

NAEP Data Plot 2005 to 2022

Amplify’s Genesis

Larry Berger and Greg Dunn founded Wireless Generation in 2000 to create the software for lessons presented on screens. Ten years later, they sold it to Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation for $360 million. Berger pocketed $40 million and agreed to stay on as head of curriculum. Wireless Generation was rebranded Amplify and Joel Klein was hired to run it.

Murdoch proposed buying a million I-pads to deliver classroom instruction. However, the Apple operating system was not flexible enough to run the software. The android system developed at Google met their needs. They purchased the Taiwanese-made Asus Tablets, well regarded in the market place but not designed for the rigors of school use. Another issue was that Wireless Generation had not developed curriculum but Murdoch wanted to beat Pearson and Houghton Mifflin to the digital education market place … so they forged ahead.

In 2012, the corporate plan was rolling along until the wheels came off. In Guilford County, North Carolina, the school district won a Race to the Top grant of $30 million dollars which it used to experiment with digital learning. The district’s plan called for nearly 17,000 students in 20 middle schools to receive Amplify tablets. When a charger for one of the tablets overheated, the plan was halted. Only two months into the experiment, they found not only had a charger malfunctioned but another 175 chargers had issues and 1500 screens were kid-damaged.

This was the beginning of the end.

By August of 2015, News Corporation announced it was exiting the education business. The corporation took a $371 million dollar write-off. The next month, they announced selling Amplify to members of its staff. In the deal orchestrated by Joel Klein, who remained a board member, Larry Berger assumed leadership of the company.

Three months later, Reuters reported that the real buyer was Laurene Powell Jobs. She purchased Amplify through her LLC, the Emerson Collective. In typical Powell Jobs style, no information was available for how much of the company she would personally control.

Because Emerson Collective is an LLC, it can purchase private companies and is not required to make money details public. However, the Waverley Street Foundation, also known as the Emerson Collective Foundation, is a 501 C3 (EIN: 81-3242506) that must make money transactions public. Waverly Street received their tax exempt status November 9, 2016.

SoR A Sales Scam

The Amplify email gave me a link to two documents that were supposed to explain SoR: (Navigating the shift to evidence-based literacy instruction 6 takeaways from Amplify’s Science of Reading: The Symposium) and (Change Management Playbook Navigating and sustaining change when implementing a Science of Reading curriculum). Let’s call them Symposium and Navigating.

Navigating tells readers that it helps teachers move away from ineffective legacy practices and start making shifts to evidence-based practices. The claim that “legacy practices” are “ineffective” is not evidence-based. The other assertion that SoR is evidence-based has no peer-reviewed research backing it.

Sally Riordan is a Senior Research Fellow at the University College London. In Britain, they have many of the same issues with reading instruction. In her recent research, she noted:

“In 2023, however, researchers at the University of Warwick pointed out something that should have been obvious for some time but has been very much overlooked – that following the evidence is not resulting in the progress we might expect.

“A series of randomised controlled trials, including one looking at how to improve literacy through evidence, have suggested that schools that use methods based on research are not performing better than schools that do not.”

In Symposium, we see quotes from Kareem Weaver who co-founded Fulcrum in Oakland, California and is its executive director. Weaver also was managing director of the New School Venture Fund, where Powell Jobs served on the board. He works for mostly white billionaires to the detriment of his community. (Page 15)

Both Symposium and Navigating have the same quote, “Our friends at the Reading League say that instruction based on the Science of Reading ‘will elevate and transform every community, every nation, through the power of literacy.”’

Who is the Reading League and where did they come from?

Dr. Maria Murray is the founder and CEO of The Reading League. It seems to have been hatched at the University of Syracuse and State University of New York at Oswego by Murray and Professor Jorene Finn in 2017. That year, they took in $11,044 in contributions (EIN: 81-0820021) and in 2018, another $109,652. Then in 2019, their revenues jumped 20 times to $2,240,707!

Jorene Finn worked for Cambria Learning Group and was a LETRS facilitator at Lexia. That means the group had serious connections to the corporate SoR initiative before they began.

With Amplify’s multiple citations of The Reading League, I speculated that the source of that big money in 2019 might have been Powell Jobs. Her Waverly Street Foundation (AKA Emerson Collective Foundation) only shows one large donation of $95,000,000 in 2019. It went to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (EIN: 20-5205488), a donor-directed dark money fund.

There is no way of following that $95 million.

The Reading League Brain Scan Proving What?

Professor Paul Thomas of Furman University noted the League’s over-reliance on brain scans and shared:

“Many researchers in neurobiology (e.g., Elliott et al., 2020; Hickok, 2014; Lyon, 2017) have voiced alarming concerns about the validity and preciseness of brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect reliable biomarkers in processes such as reading and in the diagnosis of other mental activity….

“And Mark Seidenberg, a key neuroscientist cited by the “science of reading” movement, offers a serious caution about the value of brain research: “Our concern is that although reading science is highly relevant to learning in the classroom setting, it does not yet speak to what to teach, when, how, and for whom at a level that is useful for teachers.”

“Beware The Reading League because it is an advocacy movement that is too often little more than cherry-picking, oversimplification, and a thin veneer for commercial interests in the teaching of reading.”

The push to implement SoR is a new way to sell what Amplify originally called “personalized learning.” This corporate movement conned legislators, many are co-conspirators, into passing laws forcing schools and teachers to use the SoR-related programs, equipment and testing.

SoR is about economic gain for its purveyors and not science based.

When politicians and corporations control education, children and America lose.

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Subterfuge and Learning Loss Baloney

12 Mar

By Thomas Ultican 3/12/2024

Crazy pants Eric Hanushek claims COVID “learning-loss” could cost American students $31 trillion in future earnings. He burst onto the education world’s consciousness with his 1981 paper, claiming “there is no relationship between expenditures and the achievement of students and that such traditional remedies as reducing class sizes or hiring better trained teachers are unlikely to improve matters.” This played well with billionaires from the Walton family but had no relationship with reality. Likewise, his January 2024 “learning-loss” claims were straight up baloney.

Learning-Loss Reality

In the summer and fall of 2020, NWEA, McKinsey, CREDO and others produced unfounded analysis of looming learning-loss disaster caused by school closures. Since there was no data, summer learning-loss was used as a proxy, a bad one. In 2019, Paul von Hippel’s investigation threw great doubt on the 1982 Baltimore study that powerfully supported summer learning-loss belief. He showed using modern testing analysis, learning-loss was doubtful and in some cases, students gained during the summer. This data, used to trumpet a national education crisis, had no validity.

Unfortunately, billionaire-financed organizations, out to undermine public schools, do not care.

From March 2020 to February 2021, almost a half-million people died of COVID-19. There were no vaccines or Paxlovid type drugs. Refrigerator trucks stored dead bodies and more than 2 million Americans were hospitalized, some on ventilators for months. Schools were closed; unemployment jumped to 15%, murder rates shot up by 30% and fear was rampant.

In this environment, teachers heroically switched to online education.

K-12 students lost parents, became isolated from friends and visited family members in hospitals. Many kids struggled with online classes over inadequate internet feeds, parents were losing jobs and children could not visit grandparents.

Of course the rates of learning decreased but less than one might expect.

NEAP Data Explorer Graphs

The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 8th grade data graphs above show a modest decrease in both math and reading scores between 2019 and 2022. Reading fell by three points and math by eight points on a 500 point scale. I do not see catastrophe in these declines because given the context of the pandemic they strike me as rather small, with no signs of pending economic collapse.

Students have been out of school for months with medical or other reasons. I and others with this experience can testify that we were able to recover quickly. Claiming learning-loss disaster from COVID shutdown does not make sense.

Another interesting result from the 2022 NAEP test data comes from Commissioner Peggy Carr of the National Center for Education Statistics. She said, “There’s nothing in this data that tells us there is a measurable difference in the performance between states and districts based solely on how long schools were closed.”

To add further weight, New York Times opinion writer David Wallace-Wells wrote:

“In New York City, the nation’s largest school district, schools reopened in September 2020. There, average scores for reading fell by about a point for fourth graders and improved by about a point for eighth graders; in math, fourth-grade scores fell by nine points (statewide scores fell by 12) and eighth-grade scores fell by four points (statewide scores fell by six). In Los Angeles, the second-largest district, schools stayed closed through January 2021. There, average scores actually improved in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade math and eighth-grade reading, where they improved by a robust nine points (to 257 from 248). Scores fell only in fourth-grade math (to 220 from 224).”

This January, the New York Times interactive posted “Students Are Making a ‘Surprising’ Rebound From Pandemic Closures”, based on a joint project from Stanford and Harvard Universities. Its executive summary states:

“Despite the lack of improvement during 2022-23 on assessments provided by NWEA and Curriculum Associates, we find that student achievement did improve between Spring 2022 and Spring 2023: in fact, students recovered approximately one-third of the original loss in math (0.17 grade levels out of the 0.53 grade levels decline from 2019-2022) and one quarter of the loss in reading (0.08 grade levels out of the 0.31 grade level decline from 2019-2022). Such improvements in grade levels in a single school year mean that students learned 117 percent in math and 108 percent in reading of what they would typically have learned in a pre-pandemic school year. These gains are large relative to historical changes in math and reading achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.”

George Bush’s Secretary of Education, Margaret Spelling, says, “We’re slowly recovering, but not fast enough.” That is from the woman who claimed 100% of America’s students would be above average by 2014. Without being a statistician, it never rang true to me. Her failure to recognize the great work of public schools says she has an agenda.

Outrageous Claims

Eric Hanushek’s new report claims, “Historical earnings patterns make it is possible to estimate what the learning losses documented by NAEP will cost the average student in the Covid-cohort: 6 percent lower lifetime earnings than those not in this cohort.” To document this, he links it to a publication by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, referencing an article he wrote. Without evidence, he claimed Black students will have 8 percent lower lifetime earnings. His report is mostly unsupported assertions.

He states that “nations with more skilled populations grow faster” and asserts that pandemic learning losses mean the US will be less skilled, not growing as fast as “competitors”. Based on this, he postulated future economic losses for students of $28 trillion.

Seams he believes “competitors” would not have education setbacks from COVID.

Believing the pandemic brought harmful policy shifts, causing school quality to decline, he sees abandoning standardized test accountability as number one on his pantheon of bad moves. Teachers unions pushing for their preferred education policies seems wrong to Hanushek. After all, what do teachers know about good education? They are not trained MIT economists, like he is!

The one policy he sees bringing improvement is to put students with “top flight” teachers. This comes from the man who declared “hiring better trained teachers are unlikely to improve matters”.  Hanushek suggests, “The highly-effective teachers could teach larger classes or added sections of courses with both monetary incentives and additional support for this work.”

Remember he does not believe smaller class sizes are important.

Hanushek makes non-scientifically supported assertions and then amplifies them. Like dishonest scientists, he cites his own suspicious work as evidence for new claims. His days of learning test score conversions and estimates of economic loss are these kinds of mere postulations.

A Humanistic Perspective

Professor of literacy from the University of Connecticut, Rachael Gabriel, wrote a 2021 piece for the Washington Post Answer Sheet Blog claiming, “There is no such thing as learning loss.”  Her point was that even when not in school, young people are still learning. Professor Gabriel suggested:

“What if we imagined the “corona kids” had learned more than previous cohorts?

“What if we assumed they were more resilient, well-rounded, creative, and had even more potential than previous cohorts because of what they have lived through and lived without?

“What if we assumed that instead of behind, they were advanced in ways that matter beyond measure?”

Everyone should be confident that if schools and school teachers are allowed to do their job with no “expert” interference, students will be fine. Education and learning are not linear processes. When children are ready to learn, an explosion of growth occurs. It is the intellectual equivalent to that year I grew a foot taller.

Learning-loss is not the big danger facing America’s students. The real danger is the likes of McKinsey, NWEA, CREDO and research leaders like Eric Hanushek.

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Promotion of Education Savings Accounts aka Vouchers

4 Feb

By Thomas Ultican 2/4/2024

Propaganda Rag, The 74, continuously endorses their billionaire funders’ agendas. On January 23, they were passing on lies about Education Savings Accounts (ESA), another name for school vouchers. The hidden deep pocket behind the fraudulent article was Charles Koch.

Christopher Leonard describes Koch’s economic philosophy in his masterpiece, Kochland:  

“Charles Koch became enamored with the thinking of economists and philosophers like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, two Austrian academics who did most of their formative work during the 1930s and 1940s. In later years, Charles Koch would be described as a libertarian or a conservative. But these were imperfect labels that didn’t capture his true world view. More than anything, he was an Austrian economist, or a ‘classical liberal,’ as he liked to call it. Hayek, in particular, put forward a radical concept of capitalism and the role that markets should play in society, and his thinking had an enduring effect on Charles Koch.” (Page 42)

As a “classical liberal,” Koch is opposed to Social Security, Medicare and public education. This is probably not a case of billionaire greed but his philosophical belief. He sees being taxed to pay for public schools and medical care for aging people as stealing. Hardcore libertarians believe people should pay their own way and believe children’s education, retirement and health care are individual responsibilities. 

Koch is an extremely bright MIT-trained doctorate in engineering and an astute politician.

Choice Propaganda

On January 23rd, The 74 published “Three Things to Know About National Education Tax Credit Survey.” The three things are (1) most adults support education tax credits, (2) poor people show lowest support for them and (3) parents who support education tax credits also favor education savings accounts, public school open enrollment and part-time public school access.

The subtitle of the article says, “New YouGov poll found education tax credit support from 80 percent of K-12 parents — pointing to a growing interest in school choice options.”

Education tax credits and education savings accounts are new names for vouchers. How could the claims in this article be true if a voucher law has never received a positive vote from the public?

YouGov describes itself as “an international online research data and analytics technology group.” Founded in 2000 and based in the UK, it was apparently hired by Yes. Every Kid. to run a few surveys. The results are opposite from other surveys on the same subject.

A March 2023 survey by Reuters/Ipsos found that 36% of respondents showed some support for vouchers with only 15% strongly supporting them (See Page 11). One reason YouGov got such positive responses may be how the question was asked. The Reuters/Ipsos poll inquired about “Laws allowing government money to send students to private and religious schools, even if it reduces money for public schools?” It is unknown what YouGov asked.

An article posted at 538 explained,

“Complicating the picture further is the fact that several of the survey sponsors, such as EdChoice and yes. every kid., are advocacy organizations that support voucher programs, which means they may be incentivized to word their poll questions in a way that encourages respondents to indicate support for the programs. They may also be less transparent about how their polls are conducted and how their questions are worded. For example, polling from YouGov/yes. every kid. conducted in November and December of last year found a slight majority (54 percent) of Americans support ESAs, though a significant number (33 percent) were undecided on the issue. But the organization didn’t release complete toplines or question wording, so it’s not clear how much this result might have been influenced by the pollster’s framing of the issue.”

Koch Financed It

The 74 noted at the end of the article,

“Disclosure: Yes. Every Kid. operates as part of the wider Stand Together Trust network. Stand Together Trust provides financial support to The 74.

Stand Together was founded by Charles Koch in 2003 and, like all of his organizations, it is complicated and divided into six organizations today. The Stand Together about web page says:

“Stand Together was founded in 2003, but our story really started more than 50 years ago. It began with Charles Koch — a Forbes Top-25 philanthropist and the CEO of the largest private company in the country.

Today, Brian Hooks is the chairman and CEO of Stand Together. He is co-author with Charles of Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World and a 2021 TIME 100 Next honoree, featuring leaders shaping the future of their fields.

In 2013, Stand Together Trust (EIN 46-3508366) was formed. It gifted The 74 $277,000 in 2022 and provided Yes. Every Kid. with $2,010,000.

Looking through the latest non-profit tax filings by Stand Together Trust, Yes. Every Kid. Foundation (EIN 84-3535275) and Charles Koch Foundation (EIN 48-0918408), I noticed many of the board members are the same.

From Stand Together Trust: Brian Menkes Secretary, Derek Johnson Executive Director, Brian Hooks Director, Kara Hartnett Treasure, Charles Koch Director, Henrich Heuer – Keeps the records

From Yes. Every Kid. Foundation: Derek Johnson Director, Brian Menkes Secretary, Henrich Heuer Treasure

From Charles Koch Foundation: Charles Koch Chairman, Brian Menkes Secretary, Kara Hartnett Treasure, Brian Hooks Director

Kochtopus

The graphic above appeared December 13, 2013 on Progressive Collapse. The web site is no longer viable but their image is. It uses an octopus to demonstrate the vast influence Koch has created in areas of public interest. Since then, it has been shared by many. On the occasion of David Koch’s passing in 2019, the Guardian titled its article “The Kochtopus: sprawling network keeps David Koch’s legacy thriving.”

In 2010, the Koch brothers staged one of their twice-yearly programs that became known as “Freedom Partners.” A brochure, accompanying invitations, highlighted a previous event in Aspen. The Guardian’s article reported:

“The most intriguing part of the brochure was a roll-call of names of those lured to previous “Freedom Partner” gatherings. It included the current vice-president, Mike Pence; the Wisconsin politician Paul Ryan, who would go on to become speaker of the House of Representatives; super-donors such as the hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, and most intriguingly of all two conservative justices of the US supreme court, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia.”

Koch is known to be a shrewd businessman who supports voucher plans with as little oversight as possible. Education savings accounts are fraught with malfeasance. Peter Greene, reporting at Forbes noted:

“In Arizona, an audit found that parents had spent $700K of ESA money on beauty supplies and clothing. In Florida, where voucher-receiving schools openly discriminate against LGBTQ students, a new bill proposes that audits be performed only every three years. Kentucky’s new ESA bill proposes audits after the state has found evidence of misuse of funds, which seems like a rather late shutting of the barn doors. And the bill that the Iowa senate just fast-tracked in order to establish ESAs includes no call for any audits or oversight at all. (That may be in part why the Iowa Satanic Temple has announced their intention to establish the Iowa Satanic School.)”

For Charles Koch to support this kind of financial chicanery, there must be an ulterior motive. Most likely, the purpose is destroying America’s public school system and ending the voucher mess. His classical liberal ideology would be realized and universal free public education would be ended.

Koch once again extended his octopus-like tentacles when he joined the Walton Family to form the Vela Education Fund. Vela received their 501 C3 determination (EIN 84-4185046) from the IRS December 10, 2020. Stand Together’s latest form 990 filing listed $6,340,018 to Vela and the Walton Families Foundations (EIN-13-3441466) latest form 990 filing showed $5,000,000 to Vela.

It is clear that Vela is a Koch operation. Derek Johnson and Brian Menkes are on the board and Kara Hartnett is listed as Treasurer. These three people are on several Koch organization boards. This is one more weapon in Charles Koch’s quiver for ending public education.

Billionaires like Koch, the Walton family and former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are intent on using their wealth to defeat democratic support for public schools and end “Democracy’s Schools.” America can no longer afford to put up with billionaires and their non-democratic ways.

Time that voters tax billionaires out of existence.

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Billionaire Science-of-Reading Support

21 Jan

By Thomas Ultican 1/21/2024

National Center on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) released an unreviewed report (1-16-2024) on state laws, about teaching reading inadequacy. That day, The 74 ran an article about it, verified by an EdReports’ curriculum quality evaluation. These three entities are billionaire creations, used to chip away local control of schools.

In a 2012 Washington Post Answer Sheet Blog, Diane Ravitch shared,

“NCTQ was created by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in 2000. I was on the board of TBF at the time. Conservatives, and I was one, did not like teacher training institutions. We thought they were too touchy-feely, too concerned about self-esteem and social justice and not concerned enough with basic skills and academics.”

Kate Walsh led NCTQ from 2000 until 2022, retired and Heather Peske took over. During Walsh’s tenure, notoriety was gained by teaming with Newsweek and claiming America’s teacher education programs were unsatisfactory. Their research methods were widely panned. They Looked only at class syllabi and made no attempt to ascertain new teacher job performance before denigrating the programs. 

NCTQ’s rankings were endorsed by eight state school education chiefs, part of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change: Janet Barresi, Oklahoma; Tony Bennett, Indiana; Steve Bowen, Maine; Chris Cerf, New Jersey; Deborah A. Gist, Rhode Island; Kevin Huffman, Tennessee; Eric Smith, Florida and Hanna Skandera, New Mexico.

Walsh also famously called for teacher merit pay and held up Washington DC’s schools as a good example. Critics called the Washington experiment a failure because of the high stakes and “significant differences” in percentage of teachers rated “highly effective” in low and high poverty schools. Teaching is so complicated, with no justifiable way for accurate evaluations for these high stakes.

Heather Peske has a resume that makes billionaire education reformers comfortable. After starting as an elementary teacher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she served as Director of Teacher Quality at The Education Trust and later, Vice President of Programs at Teach Plus. She was also named “Future Chief” by Chiefs for Change, became a Broad Academy Fellow and earned a doctorate in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Peske Report

Action 1 of the NCTQ report, named “Five Policy Actions to Strengthen Implementation of the Science of Reading,” began by calling for standards, “Many new teachers aren’t prepared to teach reading because only 26 states provide clear standards to teacher prep programs.” This translates to mean only 26 states provide billionaire-funded standards. NCTQ has been relentless in its attempts to undermine university-run teacher training.

Action 2 calls for “reviewing teacher prep programs to ensure they teach the science of reading,” claiming it is laudable that Indiana and Ohio have audited prep programs, ensuring focus on implementing the science-of-reading (SoR).

Action 3 requires elementary teacher candidates to pass a reading licensure test. The report cautions readers that some tests do not fully address all five core components of SoR, another call for turning over teacher selection to private entities.

Action 4 addresses “the use of high-quality curricula aligned to the science of reading.” NCTQ’s solution to this is to sign on with EdReports which reviews reading materials and lets client schools know its alignment with SoR.

The report claims “only nine states require districts to select high-quality reading curriculum materials” and noted that forward-looking states, like Arkansas, partner with EdReports.

Action 5 provides “professional learning and ongoing support to sustain implementation of science of reading.” Current elementary teachers are to receive high-quality professional learning in scientifically-based reading instruction and demonstrate their learning.

They claim Mississippi found that teachers’ ability to teach reading improved after participating in the Language Essentials for Teaching Reading and Spelling’s (LETRS) professional development program. Texas and North Carolina mandate LETRS training.

This report hinges on the belief that SoR is the only good method for teaching reading with no downside. United Kingdom went to a program similar to SoR in 2012. Last year reading researchers published a major study that concluded England’s over-emphasis on phonics instruction was harmful and caused reading test scores to go down.

NTCQ’s report was funded by The Joyce Foundation.

In August, Rachel Cohen wrote an informative and balanced article about SoR, reporting:

“Despite its close associations with the “science of reading” — LETRS has its own middling track record of effectiveness. One experimental study found teachers who were trained by LETRS did improve in their knowledge of reading science, but their students did not have statistically higher differences in achievement than teachers in the control group.”

She noted the Orton-Gillingham reading intervention, favored by SoR advocates, yielded mixed results and “wasn’t found to significantly boost comprehension or vocabulary.”

Cohen also wrote:

“Generally reading experts say the policies included in the new state reading laws are a “real mixed bag.” Some laws incorporate more research-backed ideas like coaching, while other endorsed approaches are more suspect. There is no clear amount of time that research shows should be spent daily on phonics, no established curriculum for the “science of reading” and studies on so-called decodable books — strongly endorsed by some phonics advocates to help young students practice letter-sound combinations — have their own mixed research track record.”

There probably are some good ideas hidden in the SoR movement but it is certainly not settled-science nor the best way to teach reading. Billionaires are not invested in improving reading instruction. The SoR movement is another avenue for undermining local control in education doctrine and empowers private companies over state run universities.

Billionaire Team  

  1. National Center on Teacher Quality was formed in 2000(Tax ID: 04-3536571).
    •  2021 tax form lists 2 executives on their highest paid list: Kate Walsh (former president) $259,877 and Ashley Kincade $170,044.
    • Major funders include Charles and Lynn Schusterman, Joyce Foundation, Laura and John Arnold and the Walton Family Foundation.
    • Reported donations totaled $2,378,006.
  2. The 74 Media, Inc. was formed in 2013 with non-profit tax ID:47-2788684.
    • Top executive pay includes Steven Snyder $264,968, James Roberts $265,348, Kathleen Moore O’Connor $153,341, Beverly Weintraub $184,245, Dena Wilson $142,548, Laurel Hawkins $148,632 and Emmeline Zhao $142,407.
    • Major funding comes from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the City Fund and the Walton Family Foundation.
    • Reported donations totaled $4,466,877.
  3. EdReports Org Inc. was formed in 2014 with non-profit tax ID: 47-1171149.
    • Top executive pay includes Eric Hirsh $304,596, Donnidra Johnson $196,788, Janna Chan $179,055, Courtney Allison $192,521 and Lauren Weisskirk $192,212.
    • Major funding comes from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Broadcom Corporation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Overdeck Family Foundation, The Walton Family Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
    • Reported donations totaled $7,419,702.
  4. Chiefs for Change was formed in 2014 with non-profit tax ID 47-2373903.
    • Top executive pay includes Leila Walsh $262,885, Robert Runcie (interim CEO) $208,930, Jamar Knox $253,457, Stephanie Zamorano $206,788, Kimberly Tang $188,753, Danielle Durban $198,705, Makese Motley $166,383 and Michael McGee (CEO thru 4/29/2022) $132,180.
    • Major funding from Walton Family Foundation, Overdeck Family Foundation, Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Blue Meridian Partners and Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
    • Reported donations totaled $24,294,635.

Wrapping Up

This report was produced and promoted by billionaire-created and funded organizations. Major funders listed are either billionaires or billionaire funded dark-money organizations. They pay big wages with an agenda and that does not support locally-controlled public schools. Worse, this is one small team, out of many, financed by the same people.

SoR has errors and is not settled-science. Balanced literacy probably has a better track record based on what works investigations.

Billionaires spend big money to continue chipping at local control … unconcerned about good education, only regarding national standards and control as important.

And … some want to end publicly-financed education!

Time to tax billionaires out of existence???

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