Tag Archives: Diane Ravitch

Bellwether and K12 Coalition Published Misleading Report

22 Jan

By Thomas Ultican 1/21/2026

Bellwether’s report is called “How We Solve America’s Math Crisis: A Systemwide Approach to Evidence-Based Math Learning.” The title signals that this is not a serious report. Rather, it is a polemic created with K12 Coalition to sell products. Just like there is no reading crisis in America, there is also no math crisis. However, if these companies can convince enough people a crisis exists, then a pathway for profits opens.

Andrew Rotherham, the founder of Bellwether, is a very energetic and engaged writer who has worked at Time magazine and US News World Report. He was a domestic policy adviser during the Clinton administration and like many Democrats of that era, he bought into the Republican ideology that claimed private business is always superior to any government enterprise. That is why they believe that privatizing prisons and public education is good policy.

Rotherham has served on many boards including The Mind Trust in Indianapolis and ‘The 74’. He has been an advisor to several companies looking to profit from education spending including Whiteboard Advisors; Upbeat, a data analytics company focused on teacher engagement and retention; ClearForce, a security and threat prevention company; and several nonprofit organizations.

Joining Rotherham’s Bellwether to write the “Math Crisis” report is K12 Coalition. The Coalition is one of more than 80 companies owned by the Private Equity firm Quad-C. K12 Coalition recently acquired Keys to Literacy and Professional Development Institute to add to its other organizations like Teaching Channel and Lavinia Group Instructional Support.

These are the companies claiming there is a crisis in math education and that they are the solution.

Not a Crisis

There is not a math crisis and to demonstrate this, let us turn to some national math data available from the federal government.

Since 1990, we have been testing fourth grade math. In the early years, schools and teachers gave the tests but were not too concerned about the results. That changed in 2002 with the passage of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In 2003, the punishment aspect of NCLB caused schools and teachers to focus on improving scores which did dramatically improve.

Most of the gains can be attributed to improved test taking skills and a narrowing of the math curriculum to just items being tested.

In 2022 and 2024, the average scores went down a few points. This is probably the result of two COVID era phenomena. Many schools were closed which meant numerous children missed significant time from school. Once schools were all up and running again absanteeism spiked. Rand corporation recently reported, “Chronic absenteeism in the 2024–2025 school year remained above prepandemic levels.”

The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) assigns levels to the testing scores; below basic (dark blue), basic (orange), proficient (green) and advanced (light blue). According to Diane Ravitch, basic is about the same as being at grade level and proficient is akin to an A. The advanced level is at the extreme top of the scoring range. Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institute noted, “Even students in private schools, despite hailing from more socioeconomically advantaged homes and in some cases being selectively admitted by schools, fail miserably at attaining NAEP proficiency.”

Since 2003, fourth grade math students have continuously had more than 75% of students scoring at basic or higher.

The average NAEP math data for eighth graders showed scores dropping about 7-points from the 2019 results in both 2022 and 2024. Where the fourth graders showed some gain in 2024, the eighth graders did not. A big difference between these two grades is absenteeism. Fourth graders absentee rates for both 2022 and 2024 was about 16%. The eighth grade rates of absenteeism were 23.2% in 2022 and 22.3% in 2024.

If there is a crisis in education, it is not because of the teaching. It is absenteeism which has been a more severe lingering problem since the pandemic.

The chart of eighth grade NAEP levels highlight where the drop in scoring is occurring. Basic level is almost unchanged but below basic has zoomed to levels not seen since the first two administrations in the 1990s. I speculate that the growth in below basic scores ties directly to the students who are not coming to school.

Looking at this data, it becomes very clear that there is no math education crisis in America but there is an absenteeism problem.

 The Report

The first line of the report says, “Math achievement across the United States is in crisis, with too many students leaving school without the essential math skills they need to thrive in adulthood.” (Crisis Page 2) This is followed up with their claim that effective math education has three components:

“(1) build educator and student math identity and a shared belief that math is doable, (2) balance conceptual understanding and procedural fluency while also creating meaningful opportunities for real-world application, and (3) ensure that learning progresses logically and cumulatively to deepen knowledge over time.” (Crisis Page 2)

For any math teacher from the last fifty-years and probably more, these three components are old news.

The report claims, “Data demonstrate that when high-quality materials, intentional instructional practices, and strong teacher support are combined, students’ math proficiency can improve significantly.” (Crisis Page 3) Most teachers know that whenever the term “high-quality” is broached, something fishy is afoot. Mostly it indicates marketing is ahead. Reinforcing that marketing is ahead are the following buzz words claiming good math education requires “strong instructional vision, high-quality instructional materials, curricula, professional learning and coaching, and data-driven decision-making.” (Crisis Page 3) The report reader will soon learn where all of this can be purchased.

The report authors sully themselves by stating, “Despite the importance of math, over half of America’s students are not proficient in the subject.”

The report is 34-pages in length. Page 2 which is the first page opens with the claim cited above and Page 3 introduces their three components for effective math education. For pages 3 to 22 the paper is nothing but repetition and obfuscation.

The reader is treated to statements like “The 1983 report A Nation at Risk, commissioned by the Reagan administration, highlighted that a lack of rigor in math education threatened national security and economic strength.” (Crisis Page 8) The reality is that A Nation at Risk was a complete fraud and the National Commission on Excellence in Education knew the answer they wanted before any research was attempted. They believed, with no evidence, that public schools were failing and needed reform.

Finally, we reach the purpose of the report:

“Illustrative Math and ST Math are designed to enhance math instruction with high-quality instructional materials. K12 Coalition’s Lavinia Group Instructional Support offers a comprehensive professional development program designed to help educators foster a culture of excellent math teaching.” (Crisis Page 22)

K12 Coalition and the Lavinia Group Instructional Support are in the business of selling curriculum — which they designate as high-quality — and professional development. From here to page 28, the report is nothing but advertising for these companies. The remainder of their report ends with a short conclusion and the appendix.

Conclusion

It seems alright that a company creates materials to sell its wares. What is not alright is undermining public schools and their legions of fine math educators for that purpose.

Lavina Group sells instructional support, however, the only demand for their product should come from private and charter schools. Privatizing teacher training in the public sector is a bad idea. School districts and local universities have, for more than a century, done this job very well and provided much more value than any private company can afford.

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Racist President Attacks Head Start

12 Jan

By Thomas Ultican 1/12/2026

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” created Head Start to mitigate the negative effects associated with children living in poverty. At the time, nearly half of the nation’s poor were young children. The initiative started with eight-week summer sessions and after developing strong bipartisan support it was converted into a year-round plan. Today, “Project 2025” calls for ending Head Start which has President Trump mindlessly attacking the program.

On January 20, 2025, the ground work for these attacks was laid in one of Trump’s many day-one executive orders, “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.” The order states, “The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military.”

This claim is a total lie. There was nothing illegal about the DEI order and it was certainly the opposite of immoral. DEI is an attempt to end the ravages of racism in America. However, today’s president seems intent on implementing a Whites run everything agenda.

It is difficult to perceive the administrations move against “diversity, equity and inclusion” as anything other than overt racism. Illinois Head Start Association Executive Director Lauri Morrison-Frichtl reports that the Trump administration is requiring that anything related to DEI by removed from federal grant applications. Morrison-Frichtl claims this is a big problem because “DEI is core to our mission.”

The Heritage Foundation declares that the Head Start program affords no monetary worth as it provides “little or no long-term academic value for children.”  The National Head Start Association disputes the claim, noting that participants are 12% less likely to live in poverty as adults and 29% less likely to receive public assistance. This is an example of using testing data to support a claim that the data is not capable of discerning one way or the other.

The ultra-right has always opposed public education and will use any malarkey — true on not true — to undermine free public schooling. They believe that parents should pay to educate their own children and evidently do not perceive there is any public benefit accruing from all children being educated.

Trump Signing an Executive Order in 2025

Trump’s January 29th executive order, “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families”, is another misleading attack on public education. It stated:

“Parents want and deserve the best education for their children.  But too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school.  According to this year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.”

The order goes on to state, “Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Education shall issue guidance regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives.”

The National Center for Education Statistics, a part of the Department of Education, states emphatically, “Proficient is not synonymous with grade level performance.” One of Tom Loveless’s Brookings Institute articles notes, “Even students in private schools, despite hailing from more socioeconomically advantaged homes and in some cases being selectively admitted by schools, fail miserably at attaining NAEP proficiency.” Education historian, Diane Ravich writes:

“NAEP proficient is not grade level! NAEP publications warn readers not to make that error. NAEP proficient is equivalent to an A. … NAEP Basic is akin to grade level.”

The executive order is clearly about privatizing public education; not improving it.

Child Care Cliff

October 4, 2025, the remainder of Biden’s American Rescue Plan containing $24-billion in child care funding was due to expire. According to the Biden administration this funding allowed 80% of child care centers to stay afloat. It was the largest investment in child care in US history.

In addition to this big loss, child care is facing other large headwinds in 2026. Trump’s budget bill signed into law July, 2025 significantly cuts Medicaid and SNAP benefits. The cuts shift costs for these programs to the states. If states decide to makeup for the losses, they will need to find other areas of cost savings; meaning they will need to pull back on other services like child care support. Head Start is a significant component of child care in America and it will be fighting for survival.

Intensified immigration enforcement is also hitting child care. One in five early educators are immigrants and in large urban areas the rate approaches one in two. New America released a report in December which found that between February and July, 2025 there were 39,000 fewer foreign-born child care workers than the same period in 2024. “Immigration enforcement, to me, right now, is the number one disruptor both to parent behavior and provider behavior,” claimed Natalie Renew executive director of Home Grown. “It is hugely disruptive.” 

On December 31, 2025, the Public Broadcasting Service reported, “The Trump administration has said it is freezing child care funds to all states until they provide more verification and administrative data about the programs in a move fueled by a series of fraud schemes at Minnesota day care centers run by Somali residents.” All 50 states will be impacted by the review, but Trump is focusing most of his ire on Minnesota and its Somali (not White) community.

January 6, 2026, CNN reported that the Trump administration is freezing $10 billion in funds for social services and child care in five Democratic-led states. The freeze will impact California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, according to the department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Reporting for Reuters, Nate Raymond shared that on January 8th five states sued over Trump freezing $10 billion in childcare and family assistance funds. California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York filed in Manhattan after HHS on Tuesday said it had restricted their access to the funds pending further review. The lawsuit alleges the agency lacked ⁠a legitimate justification for the freeze, provided no evidence supporting fraud concerns and infringed on the ‌Constitutional power of Congress over spending.

Will 2026 be Worse than 2025?

The lunatic in the White-house is a racist who only cares about his fellow billionaires and enriching himself. The attacks on Head Start and child care in general are more proof of this. The only thing to be done now is loudly demonstrate and in November take away the protection he is getting from spineless Republican legislators.

The truth is the Somalis are a wonderful addition to the American mosaic. Of course, Trump is disgusted by the color of their skin; they are not white. Anyone who disagrees with Trump’s self-centered agenda is not a radical leftist that hates America. Many of us are war veterans who, unlike dear leader, put our lives on the line to protect the American democracy he has set out to destroy.

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Just Finished Diane Ravitch’s New Book

25 Nov

By Thomas Ultican 11/25/2025

An Education; How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else, is highly recommended especially for the thousands of us who consider her a friend. Diane is a very generous person with both her time and resources. I first met Diane through her blog in 2014, then in person at the 2015 NPE conference in Chicago. It was in this time period that she started posting some of my articles on her blog while simultaneously informing me about who was working to destroy public education. At the time, I did not realize what a privilege this was. Her latest book is an intimate memoir that introduces us to Diane Rose Silverstein of Houston, Texas born July 1, 1938. It tells the story of a Jewish Texan from of large struggling family becoming politically influential and a national treasure.

On a page following the dedication page, she quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and devines.”

I knew that Diane had made a big change and reversed herself on test based accountability and other school reform agendas driven by conservatives and neoliberals. However, the courage this change took and the depth of her reversal were profoundly illuminated by reading this book.

Although growing up in a Roosevelt supporting family and being a registered Democrat, she became deeply conservative. Diane served on the board of the Thomas B. Fordham foundation, contributed to the Manhattan Institute and was a member of the Koret Task Force with the likes of Eric Hanushek and E. D. Hirsch Jr. Her best friends personally and politically all supported the ideas she abandoned. By reversing herself, she walked away from professional security and long held personal friendships. It was courageously principled but must have been a personally daunting move.

Me and Diane

The best part of “An Education” for me was Diane’s recounting growing up in Houston and going to a segregated public school. Her experience was just so relatable. She liked all the music my oldest sister liked. Cheating was rampant in her school just like mine and like her; I let my classmates copy my work. My rural Idaho school was kind of segregated but that was because only white people and a few Mexican families lived in the community. The Mexican kids were very popular in our school. I never met a Black person until I was a senior in high school and had only seen a few through a car window when vacationing in Kansas City. It was wonderful to find some commonalities.

I had studied engineering, worked in Silicon Valley and pretty much ignored education. But I did hear from Diane and her friends about what a failure public education had become. By 1999, I became tired of hearing about people becoming rich off their stock options, working on the next greatest hard drive or dealing with the atrocious San Jose traffic. I decided to return to San Diego and do something to help public education by enlisting in a master of education program at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).

The UCSD program was oriented toward constructivist education which I really liked. I read books by Alfie Kohn and papers by Lisa Delpit and was ready to revolutionize public education. Then I got to my first job at Bell Jr. High School and discovered that the teachers there were well informed pros with lots of experience. By comparison, I was not nearly as competent as most of them.

It was then that I started to see that I had been bamboozled about how bad public schools were and began looking for like minded people. Two books, David Beliner’s and Eugene Glass’s “50 Myths and Lies that Threaten America’s Public Schools” and Diane Ravitch’s “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” were like water for the thirsty. Soon after that, I found Diane’s blog and joined the Network for Public Education (NPE) along with many other public school advocates.

I saw Diane at the 2015 NPE conference in Chicago’s Drake Hotel. It was an absolutely inspiring event with a keynote by the amazing Yong Zhao. Although we started communicating a little by email, I did not meet Diane personally until NPE 2016 in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was there that the Reverend William Barber gave a truly inspiring speech.

Tom Ultican and Diane Ravitch in Raleigh (by Ultican)

Over the years since, I have developed an ever growing admiration for this woman. She outworks everyone and never gives up. In 2021, Diane had a really difficult open heart surgery. In the book, she notes going into surgery on April 7 and waking up a week later. I wrote her that my chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for her health and recovery had saved her life but she foolishly gave some credit to the other hundreds of people who were sending prayers and to her skilled doctors.

A year later, we had an NPE conference in Philadelphia. Diane was there and leading the proceeding but she was still weak. It was hardly noticeable but when she went to conduct an interview with Little Steven Van Zandt, he had to help her negotiate the two steps up to the platform.

Diane and Little Steven Van Zandt (by Ultican)

During my several trips to NPE conferences, I have met a Baptist preacher from Texas named Charles Foster Johnson. Charles has been a tireless fighter protecting public education and has developed an organization called Pastors for Children. I remember asking Diane if she ever thought she would be a friend and political ally with a Baptist preacher? She said, “No, never!” Earlier this year at NPE 2025 Diane and Charles asked me to take their picture. So there it was a Buddhist, a Jew and a Baptist working together and sharing friendship.

Diane Ravitch and Charles Foster Johnson 2025 (by Ultican)

Conclusion

Like I noted above, I had not paid any attention to public education so when I became aware of Diane, her blog and her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”, I was surprised to find how much seasoned educators despised Diane and could not trust her. Still to this day, I see education professionals taking shots at her and NPE. It is impossible for them to believe she changed her mind which brings to mind the words of Emerson, “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…” They just cannot accept new evidence.

I really enjoyed Diane’s latest book and encourage everyone to read it. She probably thinks this is her last book a sort of swan song. Somehow, I don’t think so. She is relentless and will almost certainly want to teach all of us about something in the future. I expect that in two or three years we will see another powerful book by Diane Ravitch.

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Crazy-Pants Makes Crazy Prediction

19 Nov

By Thomas Ultican 11/18/2025

A propaganda rag, ‘The 74’, reported, “[R]esearch from Stanford estimates learning loss over the past decade has cost our country over $90 trillion in future growth.” The article was written by Eric Hanushek, a Stanford University economist, and Christy Hovanetz, an education researcher from Jeb Bush’s pro-school choice and pro-education technology organization, ExcelinEd. Unsurprisingly, the article linked above is a paper Hanushek wrote. Crazy-pants Eric has a long history of using his own papers to support new research which is typically long on assertions and short on convincing analysis.

Last year, he claimed COVID-19 “learning-loss” could cost America $31 trillion in future economic development. Hanushek’s latest paper asserts, “The present value of future lost growth would be approximately three times current GDP (which is $30 trillion).” The justification for this new assertion is more than uncertain. The new paper refers to a model from his 2011 paper written with Ludger Woessmann­ for the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development. That paper was long on Arithmetic with several assumptions short on common sense. In his latest paper and this article, he is claiming that a small drop in the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores added to what he calls “Covid learning loss” will cost America $90 trillion in future growth.

Eric Hanushek first gained notoriety 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 claim attracted conservative billionaires but had little relationship with reality. When providing solutions in ‘The 74’, Hanushek and Hovenetz contradict his 1981 paper writing:

“First, states need to invest in effective personnel. They can do this by incentivizing strong teaching and by supporting strong teaching through professional development in evidence-based practices such as use of high-quality instructional materials and assessment data to inform instruction.”

A few decades ago, a friend gifted me the book “An Incomplete Education” by Judy Jones and William Wilson. After my 1987 edition, Jones and Wilson have updated the book and republished several times. I fondly remembered their description of economists:

“Economists are fond of saying, with Thomas Carlyle, that economics is ‘the dismal science.’ As with much that economists say, this statement is half true. It is dismal.”

“Where once rulers relied on oracles to predict the future, today they use economists. Virtually every elected official, every political candidate, has a favorite economist to forecast economic benefits pinned to that official or candidate’s views.” (Incomplete Page 120)

It just so-happens that Eric Hanushek is an MIT trained economist who is good at creating reports that conform to the beliefs of conservative billionaires. His work is scientific propaganda masquerading as academic excellence.

Notices from Hanushek and Hovanetz

“No single event over the postwar period has had an impact on our educational system that comes close to that of the pandemic.” This statement from their article is hyperbole not fact.

The impact of vouchers in Washington DC and Ohio were worse than COVID-19. In his book, “The Privateers”, Josh Cowen shared that the losses due to COVID-19 were around -0.25 standard deviations while losses in DC due to vouchers were around -0.40 standard deviations and in Ohio they were as high as -0.50 standard deviations. (Privateers Page 6) However, these were not nationwide results. Unfortunately, we don’t have much information about the mumps, measles, flu and polio epidemics of the 1950s but there is every reason to believe their impact was close to that of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The authors hold up Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana as examples to emulate stating:

“Some states made noteworthy progress on NAEP this year: Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. Each has a track record of high expectations and strong accountability.

“These states use an A–F school rating system that puts reading and math achievement front and center. They measure what matters — proficiency and growth — and they report results in a way families and educators can understand. Transparency and rigor are fueling their progress.”

The A—F school ratings system is worthless because it only measures parent income. As Diane Ravitch wrote on her blog:

“The highest rated schools have students with the highest income. The lowest rated schools have students with the lowest income.”

I wondered what Hanushek and friend were alluding to, so I graphed the average NAEP data for 4th and 8th grade reading and math since 2015 to see if it provided a clue.

NAEP Data for Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee

I added a bar indicating the NAEP cut scores for the 2024 NAEP designations of basic, proficient and advanced as a reference. It is well known that NAEP’s proficiency level is set well above grade level which means 70% of students not being rated proficient is not a bad score. Furthermore, writing in Forbes, Peter Greene shared, “An NCES report back in 2007 showed that while NAEP considers “basic” students not college ready, 50% of those basic students had gone on to earn a degree.”

The data graphed here indicates to me that all three states have solid public education programs. It is noteworthy that in reading their 4th graders only averaged basic but by 8th grade their average results were above basic. However, all three states are among the bottom 15 scoring states in the US and as we would expect are in the bottom 15 states in family income. What I do not see is why they are held out by Hanushek and Hovanetz as exemplars.

Concluding Remarks

The first blogger to label Eric Hanushek crazy-pants was Peter Greene. I have found Peter’s creativity worth stealing.

Let’s be clear, there is no such thing as “learning loss” involving students. This is a complete misnomer. Students may not achieve some state provided targets but they are always learning; maybe not what we want them to learn but always learning.

Eric Hanushek is a huckster for conservative billionaires. This latest claim is beyond farcical. Claiming to have knowledge of economic development in 40 years is fantasy and then tying that fantasy to NAEP testing data is bizarre. His $90 trillion claim for loss of future economic development would embarrass a carnival barker.

Hanushek is the guy who thinks education can be measured in days of learning which means that students learn in a near linear fashion. They absolutely do not but even this bogus claim would seem prescient when compared to this latest assertion.

Standardized testing only correlates with family income. To evaluate education based on this fictitious instrument is fraudulent. By extension, this makes economist Eric Hanushek a con artist.

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Billionaire-Financed Education Propaganda

29 Sep

By Thomas Ultican 9/29/2025

September 9th, propaganda rag, ‘The 74’, published a classic example of anti-public education flummery, “COVID Worsened Long Decline in 12th-Graders’ Reading”. That long decline is a drop of nine points on a 500 point scale, but if the y-values on a line chart are manipulated it does look like a long decline. Starting with the 1994 data instead of the 1992 data that drop becomes 6 points, all of which occurred after science of reading was widely forced into classrooms starting about 2013. Whatever the cause for mildly declining reading scores, the article offers hair-on-fire analysis from pro-billionaire sources.

The 2024 math results had a 7-point decline from the highs; however 12th grade math data has only been gathered since 2005.

Professional Analysis – Really?

George Bush and Ted Kennedy gave us the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act which significantly expanded the role of the federal government in education. Its philosophy of test and punish substantially increased the pressure to score well on testing. Since the only variable that higher test scores correlate with is family wealth, the high stakes meant that several outstanding schools in poor neighborhoods were destroyed. Another pernicious outcome of NCLB was the narrowing of curriculum.

‘The 74’ turned to a person deeply associated with NCLB, former US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, for expert comments.

Near the conclusion of the Bush administration, Michelle R. Davis shared:

“Spellings, who has been working on education issues for Bush since the 1990s and his days as a Texas governor, is the person who from the very beginning has had to make NCLB work. She was a key architect of the law, arguably Bush’s most significant domestic accomplishment and a grand experiment for Republicans, who traditionally thought education should be left to the states.”

George Bush and Margaret Spellings at her Swearing in

In reality, NCLB was a major disaster and its testing ideology still harms schools. The big fallacy at its foundation is that error and variability are so rampant in standardized testing the scores are meaningless. An Ouija board would be just as accurate.

‘The 74’ reports that Spellings believes the last several administrations have squandered the power of the federal government and weakened its ability to push improvement. They quote her saying, “When you take your foot off the gas and stop using federal leadership, federal imperative around these performance issues, it shows up.” She claims the Every Student Succeeds Act, implemented by President Obama, was “less Muscular” than NCLB and asserts, “We know how to use the federal role in smarter ways to the benefit of kids, and we stopped doing it.”

In 2010, Diane Ravitch who had supported NCLB wrote the book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” revealing her conclusion that she had been wrong. A book review by the anti-testing organization Fair Test stated:

“The book’s central chapter on NCLB describes, with exceptional clarity, the law’s flawed assumptions and failed prescriptions. She appropriately lambastes the goal of 100% proficiency, quoting her conservative friends Chester Finn and Frederick Hess saying the goal is ‘comparable to Congress declaring that every last molecule of water or air pollution would vanish by 2014.’ The important difference, she writes, is that ‘If pollution does not utterly vanish….no public official will be punished.’ The chapter concludes, ‘Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.”’

Another expert source quoted by ‘The 74’ is Robin Like, Director of the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). Founder Paul Hill’s acolyte, Robin Lake, says these latest results are “frustrating.” She claims, “[T]hat if we don’t change course, things will be very bad — and things are very bad.”

In 2021, for mysterious reasons, this Bill Gates financed organization left the University of Washington for new digs at Arizona State University.

The sky is falling rhetoric is common for CRPE. Founder Hill was a member of Brooking’s cadre of researchers convinced that American public education was failing. Furthermore, they shared a general agreement that market based business principles were central to fixing schools and declared teachers unions and governance by locally elected school boards must be overturned if education was to be saved.

Much of the “research” done by CRPE undermines public education and promotes its privatization.

Lake worked on “Doing School Choice Right” funded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. CPRE listed two salient goals for their study:

  • “Create models for how school districts can oversee public schools in multiple ways—including direct operation, chartering, contracting, and licensing private schools to admit voucher students. This study is conducted in partnership with the National Charter School Research Project.”
  • “Examine issues involved in moving toward pupil-based funding, particularly technical, legal, and regulatory barriers.”

These themes are central to CRPE’s education ideology.

Billionaire Who Motivated ‘The 74’s’ Article

The article ends with two disclosures. (1) “This article was published with the support of XQ Institute” and (2) “The Future of High School Network and The 74 both receive financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, XQ and the Walton Family Foundation.”

The Future of High School Network has one purpose and that is to end the Carnegie unit. More than receiving financial support from the Carnegie Corporation it is owned and founded by the corporation. EdTech leaders want to get rid of the Carnegie unit in order to institute their kids at screens education schemes.

The Carnegie unit is a minimum requirement creating a nationwide agreed-upon structure. It does not control pedagogy or assessments but insures a minimum amount of time on task.

Writer Derek Newton wisely pointed out in Forbes:

“Cheating … is so pervasive and so easy that it makes a complete mockery of any effort to build an entire education system around testing.”

“But because of the credit hour system, which is designed to measure classroom instruction time, it’s still relatively hard to cheat your way to a full college degree.”

Laurene Powell Jobs is famous for having been married to technology genius and Apple founder Steve Jobs. She is a billionaire and co-owns Atlantic magazine. Jobs studied economics and political science at University of Pennsylvania and received an MBA from Stanford; has no education training. In 1997, she founded the Emerson Collective which promotes impact investing and she is board chair of The XQ Institute.

Billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs is a leader in the AI-revolution in education. Her Amplify digital lessons liberally apply AI and her XQ Institute is working to integrate AI into classrooms. Edward Montalvo, XQ institute’s senior education writer has claimed:

‘“The future of AI in education is not just about adopting new technologies; it’s about reshaping our approach to teaching and learning in a way that is as dynamic and diverse as the students we serve,’ XQ Institute Senior Advisor Laurence Holt said. … Through AI, we can also transcend the limitations of the Carnegie Unit — a century-old system in which a high school diploma is based on how much time students spend in specific subject classes.

“Changing that rigid system is our mission at XQ.”

Turns out Laurene Powell Jobs is a typical arrogant billionaire who thinks because they are rich they must be brilliant. With no education background, she is angling to revolutionize public education with harmful technology. She has no clue about the damage being wreaked.

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Trump: Project 2025 and Education

19 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/19/2025

Lindsey M. Burke, Director of the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, opened her education section in Project 2025 stating, “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” The liar-in-chief made it seem while campaigning that he knew little about Project 2025 and declared it was not his agenda. Don’t be shocked to learn that his education policies appear to be lifted directly from “The Mandate for Leadership the Conservative Promise – Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project.”

On July 14th, the Supreme Court sanctioned the Presidents dismantlement of the Department of Education. Many of us thought that the administration could not shut it down because it would never survive a filibuster in the Senate. As Diane Ravitch wrote:

“But I was wrong. Obviously. It didn’t occur to me that Trump would fire half the staff of the Department and dismantle it without seeking Congressional approval.”

In 1974, congress passed the Impoundment Control Act which Richard Nixon signed into law. It compels an administration to spend the money congress has appropriated. Most people, like Diane Ravitch, never expected Trump to just ignore the law.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, dissented with the ruling which overturned lower courts and allowed the administration to fire almost half of the Department of Education work force. Before the layoffs, the Department had 4100 employees, with buyouts and these layoffs; the department now employs fewer than 2,200 people. Sotomayor wrote, “When the executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.”

The Current Supreme Court of the United States

It took only ten minutes after the Supreme Court’s decision was announced for Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, to let more than a thousand people know they were officially fired.

On his failed Truth Social platform, even though he knows nothing about education, Trump posted:

“The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE. Thank you to the United States Supreme Court!”

Attacks and Legal Responses

Two more examples of Professor Burke’s numerous proposals (page 322) in Project 2025 are part of the Trump-2 agenda:  

“Restoring state and local control over education funding. As Washington begins to downsize its intervention in education, existing funding should be sent to states as grants over which they have full control, enabling states to put federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law.

Safeguarding civil rights. Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.

After the Supreme Court authorized Trump to ignore the law and continue gutting the Education Department, he posted:

“Beyond these core necessities, my administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible. It’s doing us no good. We want to return our students to the states.”

In his March 20 executive order to close the Department of Education, Trump demonstrated a weak understanding of education, “This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.” It is well known that NAEP’s proficiency level is set well above grade level which means 70% of students not being rated proficient is not a bad score. Writing in Forbes, Peter Greene shared, “An NCES report back in 2007 showed that while NAEP considers “basic” students not college ready, 50% of those basic students had gone on to earn a degree.”

This termination of employees order survived legal push-back but it is not certain that the Supreme Court is completely corrupt and some of the many legal fights pending may not have such a MAGA pleasing outcome.

 After his win, Trump said, “We had a big win with the Supreme Court over the Department of Education, and we went, as you know, we want to bring education back to the states, take the federal government out of it, little, tiny bit of supervision, but very little, almost nothing, like to make sure they speak English.”

If that is true, why would his Big Billionaire Budget eliminate Title III-A money which is used to assist English language learners. Or end the 1966 Migrant Education Program designed to supports students of families who move for seasonal labor.

Court Battles

In February, Secretary McMahon sent the infamous “Dear Colleague Letter” which attacked diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) programs as being founded on racial discrimination. One response from a school leader refusing to certify that he and his district would end their DEI program noted, “Thank you for your April 3 memorandum, which I read several times — not because it was legally persuasive, but because I kept checking to see if it was satire.”

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon

On April 24th, the Legal Defense Fund Reported concerning McMahon’s order, “Today, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction blocking the enforcement of a certification requirement from the U.S. Department of Education that threatens schools with a loss of federal funding based on harmful misinterpretations of civil rights laws, threatening Black students’ equal access to a quality education.”

The Wonkette reported about another attack on head start, “Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added further shame to his family’s legacy Thursday, announcing that effective immediately, undocumented immigrant children will be banned from the Head Start preschool program, which not only provides child care and preparation for kindergarten to low-income preschoolers, but also provides school meals and health screenings.” (Thursday was July 10th)

The ACLU filed a suit April 28th to stop the Trump administrations attacks on head start stating, “Defendants are now dismantling this crucial program in defiance of Congress—a goal specifically identified in “Project 2025: A Mandate for Leadership.” They say they will amend the suit to include Kennedy’s attack. The ACLU lawyers claim this is part of a broader attack on working families in which the Trump administration is attempting to rewrite the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) to make it harder for children to access critical early childhood education. ACLU attorney Jennesa Calvo-Friedman noted, “No agency – including HHS – has ever defined early education as a restricted ‘federal public benefit.’”

As more and more court battles pile up, Reuters’ Andrew Goudsward reports, “Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit.”  A lawyer who left stated:

“Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system. How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?”

Lawyers cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable for the wave of departures. A few feared they would be pressured into misrepresenting facts or legal issues in court.

In another legal battle, Professor Johann Neem of Western Washington University believes the June 27 Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor threatens public education. The winning parents were opposed to LGBTQ literature of any kind and sued for the right to review all material before their kids see it.

Justice Sotomayor wrote, “Never, in the context of public schools or elsewhere, has this Court held that mere exposure to concepts inconsistent with one’s religious beliefs could give rise to a First Amendment claim.” She concluded, “To presume public schools must be free of all such exposure is to presume public schools out of existence.”

The Trump/Project 2025 attack on public education has become a giant legal battle. Will public schools survive or will our convicted felon president and the radical-right prevail?

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NPE2025 Columbus Impressions

8 Apr

By Thomas Ultican 4/8/2025

Last weekend, it was a rainy sad environment greeting the 2025 Network for Public Education (NPE) conference but inside the Columbus Hyatt it was blue-skies. When I left Ohio Monday morning, the local environment matched the hope and determination generated for three days.

The first conference event was a Friday evening session with Diane Ravitch and Professor Josh Cowen discussing vouchers. They made three things abundantly clear. As Cowen noted, “By every standard of the policy debate, vouchers have failed.” They always get defeated by voters at the poles and have become welfare for the wealthy. Funding for vouchers is wrecking state budgets.

As people were exiting the room, I got Diane and Pastor Charles Foster to pose for a picture. This created a wonderful example of tolerance and communication needed today. Ravitch is a Jew from New York City, Charles is a devout Baptist from Texas and I am a Nichiren Buddhist from California; yet we are all three genuine friends.

Charles and Diane

Day 2, Saturday

It was a marathon of sharing. At 8 AM, participants gathered in a large room for breakfast and speeches. Ravitch shared that “The Department of Education was not created to raise test scores but to raise equity.” She noted that America is a diverse country and that we must live with diversity and not deny it.

Jesse Piper, an NPE board member from rural Missouri, passionately ended the breakfast meeting claiming that when you start defunding schools, the community goes next. Jesse used the demise of her on small town as an example. Piper also stated, “Christian nationalism is teaching women to be submissive to their husbands and husbands to be submissive to their bosses.” She concluded by asserting to this large room full of public school educators, “You’re not indoctrinating students, that is what religious and private schools do.”

Jesse Piper

From there we broke into sessions in several rooms. Unfortunately, wonderful sessions were occurring at the same time making it hard to pick which one to attend. I presented on Science of Reading (SoR) in the first breakout presentations of the day. Nancy Bailey and Elena Aydarova PhD joined in the sharing. We had a large audience and people kindly told us they liked the presentations. (I am willing to share the Power Point file I used.)

Nancy Bailey

After lunch and a wonderful speech by John H. Jackson president of the Schott Foundation, I went to learn about Lifewise. I had no idea how fast that organization is growing. It was founded in 2018 in Ohio. There are now organizations in 26 states including California. Lifewise promotes RTRI (Release Time for Religious Instruction). Schools that participate must release children during the school day for a bus trip to the Lifewise facility where they learn a benighted form of Christianity based on the ancient Nicene Creed.

There are two types of states that authorize Lifewise, may-states and shall-states. Ohio just became a shall-state that mandates schools to participate if it is offered.

Lifewise wants kids younger than 14 because they are more successfully indoctrinated. When the kids come back to class, they show their presents and tell stories of ice cream parties. Kids that are at Lifewise often miss out on important learning. An Ohio science teacher showed pictures of his kids getting ready for the total eclipse that the Lifewise students missed.

That evening, we enjoyed a speech by the 2022 national teacher of the year, Kurt Russell. Russell says he no longer thinks of public education as important. Rather because it is the foundation of our democracy, it is vital, it is essential and “it is bigger than that; it is life.” Usually I am not impressed by someone being named teacher year whether it is of the school, district, county, state or the country. In this instance, he seemed totally deserving of the accolade.

Kurt Russell

Day 3, Sunday

I was really moved by the New Orleans presentation. We heard from a former charter school student and a brilliant mom. They made it clear that control is the byword in the district’s charter schools. The young man, a former charter school student, described a hair-raising ordeal which sounded like child abuse designed to keep the black community in its place.

Last year, when a charter school failed the superintendent replaced it with the first New Orleans public school since 2017. She was fired, but that is what the mom speaking to us claimed parents want. She said they desire that every time a charter school fails it is replaced by a more stable public school. Charter schools have become a revolving door with a large percentage of schools going out of business every year. Unfortunately, those in power want to maintain their portfolio model school district that does not include public schools.

She also said that charters in New Orleans are being sued regularly for some of their practices with children. However, there is almost no reporting about the suits because the settlements always include a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). She told the story of asking a KIPP administrator how many NDA’s they had created. He said none but when she retorted that she was in court just the week before and saw a KIPP NDA created, he backed off and promised to get back to her. She is not holding her breath.

The New Orleans Panel

The brunch time speaker was state representative from Texas, Gina Hinojosa, who has been in an all out battle with Texas Governor Greg Abbott to stop his universal voucher scheme. She says private equity is the plan that is causing billionaires Dunn, Wilks, Yass, Musk and others to finance vouchers in Texas. Hinajosa stresses that the most sinister aspect of the voucher plan is profiting through finance. She reports that a Texas Catholic Credit Union has already been established.

Gina Hinohosa

The last event on Sunday afternoon was special. American Federation of Teachers President, Randi Weingarten, presented us with a fiery speech when she introduced the final keynote speaker of the conference, Governor Tim Waltz of Minnesota.

Waltz was definitely not a disappointment. He made many vintage Waltz type statements:

“I know in this room I’m preaching to the choir. The choir needs to sing louder.”

“Some people say ‘I’m just not into politics.’ Well too damn bad, politics is into you.”

“We should not call them oligarchs, we should call them what they are greedy bastards.”

He was proud of the fact of being cited as the least wealthy person ever to run for Vice-President of the United States.

Waltz asserted that the middle class was built by public education and labor unions. As for what we are going through now, he speculates that it will get worse; so be ready for it.

Governor Waltz surprised us by staying in the room and taking picture with hundreds of us.

Tom and Tim

My impression was that this was the best NPE event to date. The breakout sessions that I attended were amazing and I did not hear of any disappointments. The keynote speakers were excellent and finishing with Governor Waltz was the cherry on top.

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Questioning the Mississippi Miracle Again

21 Mar

By Thomas Ultican 3/21/2025

The national assessment of education progress (NAEP) is a biennial effort of the Department of Education. At the end of February, Chad Aldeman of The 74 – a billionaire created propaganda rag – asks, “How did Mississippi go from 49th in the country a decade ago to near the top today?” The simple answer is they didn’t. Still Aldeman’s article carries the title, “There Really Was a ‘Mississippi Miracle’ in Reading. States Should Learn From It.”

Australian, Noel Wilson, published his dissertation “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” in 1997. This work, which has never been refuted, says that error in standardized testing is too large to reliably compare student outcomes. Psychologist Donald Campbell observed, “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” This is known as Campbell’s Law. Together, these two seminal works tell us that standardized testing to monitor and evaluate education is both unreliable and bad policy.

I have finally found something positive coming out of our felonious president’s administration. ABC News reports that he has ended the agency that compiles the “Nation’s Report Card” also known as NAEP. He eliminated the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) which had existed for more than 150 years. Now, we won’t know how many students or schools our nation has or other important data about them, but we will no longer be wasting money on standardized testing.

This may be the last time we get a chance to look at billionaire sponsored deceptions based on NAEP testing.

Not a Miracle

Aldeman states:

“… [W]hen the Urban Institute adjusted NAEP scores based on each state’s demographics, Mississippi’s fourth-grade reading scores came out on top.”

“Some people have even tried to cast doubt on Mississippi’s NAEP gains by arguing they’re merely a function of testing older kids. But this has been debunked: Mississippi does hold back more kids than other states, but it always has, and the average age of Mississippi’s NAEP test-takers has barely budged over time.”

The Urban Institute and every other report that shows reading scores surging in Mississippi are based on 4th grade NAEP scores. It is remarkable how well Mississippi fourth graders have performed on NAEP reading tests since 2013. In 2024, they moved all the way up to 10th in comparison to the 49 other states, the District of Columbia, Department of Defense schools and Puerto Rico.

The first link in the second paragraph quoted above is a post by Diane Ravitch. She did not say anything about student ages but did state, “The surest path to success in fourth-grade reading on NAEP is to hold back third-graders who did not pass the third-grade reading test.” She also linked to a post from the right-wing Fordham Institute which posits, “A partial explanation for its NAEP improvement is that it holds students back.”

The second link in the paragraph is from a Fordham Institute article refuting Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times. Fordham asserts, “His claims about Mississippi’s NAEP scores and retention policy are based on a debunked theory and are demonstrably wrong in ways that he should have known.” This latest link is to a Magnolia Times article by Carey Wright, who as secretary of education in Mississippi instituted its reading program including third grade retention. Ms. Wright has too much skin in the game to be a powerful source that “demonstrably” sets the LA opinion writer straight.

If Mississippi’s reading program is really working not just 4th graders but 8th graders should also be showing gains. They do not. NCES publishes comparison lists of state results.

Using the 2024 data, we see that indeed Mississippi’s 4th graders were number ten in the country but why are their 8th graders still number 43? The Mississippi reading program has been in effect since 2013 which means the 8th graders have been subjected to it their entire school life.

Another way to look at this is by plotting Mississippi reading scores against national averages.

This data shows us there is something fishy about the Mississippi’s 4th grade reading scores. They are hardly miracles but seem more like subterfuges.

It does not conclusively prove anything but science of reading, which is employed by Mississippi, started to be widely implemented in 2013 at the same time national reading scores started getting worse.

Carey Wright and the Right-wing

Carey Wright began her education career in 1972 as a teacher in Maryland.

In 2010, Michelle Rhee hired her to be chief academic officer for Washington DC public schools. Wright was an administrator in the DC schools during the height of their cheating scandals. Besides working with some of the most callus and harmful education leaders in American history, she is a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change and a graduate of the late Eli Broad’s superintendent training academy. Both organizations are or were widely seen as enemies of public education.

In a 2023 Magnolia Times article, Wright claimed:

“Students who are retained in third grade because of reading deficiencies are provided with intensive interventions and support throughout the school year so they will be successful in later grades. 

“A recent report from Boston University’s Wheelock Educational Policy Center found this strategy is working. The report reviewed English Language Arts scores and later academic outcomes from the first cohort of third graders promoted and retained under Mississippi’s Literacy-Based Promotion Act of 2013.”

Upon opening the link Wright provided, we discover that the cited report was commissioned by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which is Jeb Bush’s non-profit. He is chairman of the board and his girl Friday, Patricia Levesque, is the CEO. Their organization is known for working to privatize public schools and promoting Edtech.

Evidently ExcelinEd’s researchers discovered that the 6th grade results do not look as bad as the 8th grade results. The reports first key finding states, “For students who were in the third grade in 2014-15, being retained under Mississippi’s policy led to substantially higher ELA scores in the sixth grade.” This appears to be an example of looking for data to sell your ideology.

After spending four years in the classroom, Wright transitioned to various administrative roles. When leading special education services in Montgomery County during the early 2000s, she was serving in the middle of a corporate education reform triumvirate. John Deasy was promoting charter schools and teacher “pay for performance” in Prince George County. Baltimore had Andres Alonzo firing teachers and closing schools. Just a few miles away, Michelle Rhee was promising to “fix” Washington DC’s schools by firing teachers and principals.

Unfortunately, Carey Wright was drawn into this kind of billionaire school reform. She was probably a talented administrator, but many of her decisions were tainted by her friends in education.

The data does suggest that there has been some education progress in Mississippi. That improvement is most likely due to the dedication of poorly compensated public school educators.

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New NAEP Scores No Reason to Panic

4 Feb

By Thomas Ultican 2/4/2025

Billed as the Nations Report Card, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) just released data from the 2024 testing window. The first NAEP assessments occurred in 1969 and in 1996 school testing in all states became mandatory every two years. Almost since the beginning, the testing results have been treated as a crisis moment. This year, both math and reading data came in lower than pre-pandemic levels. To the reform group, Education Trust, this is a time for action but it seems more likely that less action might be in order. The last two decades of education reform have been a harmful disaster. So prudence in our response is a better course.

The problem with all this data is summed up nicely by Peter Greene:

“As long time readers know …, I’m not one to get excited about scores on the Big Standardized Test, despite the claims that it will tell us How Schools Are Doing. There are lots of reasons to suspect that America’s Gold Standard of Testing is not all the gold standardy. And there is one serious lesson to be learned, which is that having all this cold hard data doesn’t actually change a damned thing— everyone just “interprets” it to support whatever it is they wanted to do anyway.

Plots of the average testing results covering math and reading for the past 32-years do not inspire much insight even if you believe in standardized testing.

The plots above were created from NAEP Data. Since 1992, both sets, which are plotted on a 500 point scale, wiggled up and down within a 10 point range.

In 2020, COVID-19 happened and this year’s 4th graders joined in-school classes a year or more late. The 8th graders missed at least their 5th grade in-school classes and some of them missed significantly more. During that year or more out of school, a tendency for truancy developed. So it is not surprising that their testing scores are not stellar, but they are still within the 10-point historical range.

Reading Scores Down

Peggy Carr, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) said, “Student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, reading scores continue to decline, and our lowest performing students are reading at historically low levels.”

For the past decade, there has been a major dispute over how to teach reading in the United States. Dozens of states have overhauled their reading instruction to adopt so called science of reading (SoR) methods. These changes came about largely due to a well financed corporate driven campaign that has drowned out literary experts.

NAEP created charts based on reading data disaggregated by scoring percentiles are shown below.

In both the 4th grade and 8th grade charts reading scores started declining about 2015 and have fallen every testing window since. At about the same time, balanced literacy, which was the nation’s most popular method for teaching reading, started being replaced by SoR. The correlation between SoR and the dip in reading scores is obvious but may be misleading. Chalkbeat reports, “And while federal education officials are usually reticent to explain what caused a particular increase or decrease in scores, Carr cautioned that the near-universal dips in reading should not be taken as evidence that reading reforms have not worked.”

I have believed for some time that SoR is less about good teaching and more about profits, so it is tempting to discount Dr. Carr’s warning. Standardized testing has serious limitations and it would be hypocritical to discount it only when I did not like the results and then hale the outcomes that I liked.

However, the NAEP data since 2017 certainly provides NO support for SoR.

Math Staying Steady

The 2024 math results for fourth-grade improve by 3% over 2022 but were still 2% lower than the pre-pandemic 2019 testing. Eighth-graders treaded water in 2024 with scores that were not significantly different from 2022 and were 8% lower than 2019.

NAEP allows researchers to break down scores by region. I created this bar graph of fourth grade math for the last five testing windows. The South, Midwest and Northeast had almost identical scores while the west lagged by 4-6 percent. Would we all like to see better scores? of course. On the other hand, there is nothing here that looks dire. In 2022, there was a small drop in scores and in 2024 about half of the drop was overcome.

Absenteeism is probably holding back score recovery in both math and reading. It is generally considered that when a student misses more than 10% of the school year they are chronically absent. National Public Radio (NPR) has reported, the rates of chronic absenteeism doubled during the pandemic. NAEP also asked students, during this last testing cycle, how many days they had missed in the previous month. NPR notes that, “Across the board, lower-performing students were more likely to report missing five or more days of school in the previous month, compared with higher-performing students.”

Some Final Observations

 In 2007, NCES performed a study on what happened to the 1992 NAEP participants. They were interested in how the four attainment level, Below Basic, Basic, Proficient and Advanced, matched student outcomes.

The key results are shown in the table above. It looks like the levels have misleading names. Half of the students in the Basic group achieved a bachelor’s degree or higher. This means that they were college ready and academically proficient. The NAEP labels are aligned too high; therefore misleading.

In 2019, Diane Ravitch commented on that year’s NAEP data: “After a generation of disruptive reforms—No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, VAM and Common Core—after a decade or more of disinvestment in education, after years of bashing and demoralizing teachers, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for 2019 shows the results:

‘“Over the past decade, there has been no progress in either mathematics or reading performance, and the lowest-performing students are doing worse,”’ said Peggy Carr, the associate commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP. ‘“In fact, over the long term in reading, the lowest-performing students—those readers who struggle the most—have made no progress from the first NAEP administration almost 30 years ago.”’

SoR became the billionaire reform de jure in 2019. No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, VAM and Common Core had come to be seen as either failures or frauds. Profiteers hoped the new SoR strategy would lead to privatizing and controlling all aspects of education and they made great efforts to promote it. Will the 2024 NAEP results be the beginning of the end for their greedy dreams?

Whatever the case, Ravitch’s 2019 NAEP analysis still holds true. The 2024 NAEP results are nothing to celebrate but certainly are not a crisis. After all, they are based on standardized testing that is not capable of measuring learning or teaching. Family wealth is about the only thing to which NAEP data correlates.

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My First NPE Conference Revisited

2 Oct

By Thomas Ultican 10/2/2023

I traveled from San Diego to Chicago’s famous Drake Hotel for the Network for Public Education (NPE) conference in 2015. Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers’ Union and her union hosted the event and leaders of the National teachers unions, Lily Eskelsen García from the National Education Association and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers were present.

Scholar author, Yong Zhao, was the day-one keynote speaker.

At the hotel early Friday evening, Anthony Cody, co-founder of NPE, standing on the entry stairs, greeted new arrivals. This tall man had developed a reputation as a renowned champion for public education. Steve Singer from Pennsylvania and T.C. Weber from Tennessee arrived right after me and I knew it was going to be special.

Karen Lewis was fresh-off leading a stunning victory by the Chicago teachers’ union. She had been planning to run for Mayor of Chicago but unfortunately was diagnosed with brain cancer. With her amazingly big heart, for the next several years, we communicated by telephone. It was stunning how she always had time for me even when sick. I miss her.

Day One

Next morning at breakfast, I met Professor Larry Lawrence, a lifelong education professional and friend of public education who just happens to live 20-miles up old Highway 101 from me. We became quite close. I wrote about Larry in my post, Breakfast with Professor Lawrence, laying out some of his awesome contributions to public education.

The first session kicked off with addresses by Chicago’s Jitu Brown and Newark student union leader, Tanisha Brown.

Jitu heads Journey for Justice and would become nationally recognized when he led a 34-day hunger strike, saving Chicago’s Dyett High School from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s chopping block. He shared that once, a man from Chicago, claiming to be a community organizer, dipped his toe in the ocean and when it was cold, moved on. It was Barak Obama.

Tanisha Brown was part of a student movement to save Newark’s schools from being privatized and from, the authoritarian control of a former TFA member, Cami Anderson.

These two speakers got the conference off to a rousing start.

During graduate school at UCSD in 2001, I spent a lot of time looking at various reforms. Then, it meant improving education, not privatization. The work of Deborah Meyer particularly stood out. Her small class-size and student-centered efforts in both New York City and Boston were inspirational. Getting to meet her at this conference in Chicago was a special treat. She and her niece talked with me for almost an hour. NPE is one of the few places this could happen.

On the way to lunch, I encountered Annie Tan, a special education teacher, then working in Chicago. The tables were round and could seat more than 10 people. We found a table right next to the stage. It turned out that four people at our table were going to be holding the lunch-time discussion: Jennifer Berkshire, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Peter Greene and Jose Vilson.

Today, almost everyone in the fight to save public education knows Jennifer Berkshire but up until 2015, she was hiding her identity under the pseudonym, Edu-Shyster. Julian Vasquez Heilig is now the head of education at the University of Kentucky; then, he was a department chief at Sacramento State University in California. Peter Greene was a teacher blogger from rural Pennsylvania and known to some of us as the author of Crumuducation. Jose Vilson was a teacher blogger from New York City, with a large following. 

Also at the table was Adell Cothorne, the Noyes Elementary school principal, famous for exposing Michelle Rhee’s DC cheating scandal.

I will always appreciate Annie Tan, leading me up to that table. It was interesting that Peter Greene, his wife, Jose Vilson and I all play the trombone. Everyone knows that trombone players are the coolest members of the band.

The main event was a presentation by Professor Yong Zhao. Everybody was impressed and highly entertained. He had just published Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?: Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World. His book and presentation thoroughly discredit standards and standards-based testing.

Zhao is a funny guy. In 2015, readiness was a big education issue for the billionaire boys club … readiness for college, high school and even kindergarten, were written about in all big money education publications.

He said kindergarten readiness should mean “kindergartens are ready for children.” What he wanted for his children was “out of my basement readiness” and shared a personal experience of being in a Los Angeles elevator with Kim Kardashian, observing she had “out of my basement readiness”!

Union Leaders

In 2015, Bill Gates spent lavishly to control the direction of public education, giving large handouts to education journalists, education schools and teachers unions, in support of his proposal for the national Common Core State Standards. Activists at the Chicago meeting wanted the teachers unions not to accept Gates money, the underlying issue facing Lily Eskelsen García and Randi Weingarten as they took the stage in the main room for a Q & A session moderated by Diane Ravitch.

Both García and Weingarten were excellent presenters, consummate professionals, who did not disappoint. Most of the hour, Ravitch asked questions about topics, like teacher tenure and the scurrilous attack on classroom teachers. Answers from both union leaders received big positive responses.

The last question of the day was about the unions taking donations from Bill Gates. García and Weingarten both swore that their unions would no longer accept his gifts. This was not entirely true but did lead to that outcome eventually.

I personally got a chance to speak with García about diversity, saying in southern Idaho where I grew up, it might have a larger percentage of Mormons than Utah. She joked that in the Salt Lake school district, where she taught, diversity meant there were some Presbyterians in the class. Lily was genuine and warm.

Some Thoughts on NPE

Be careful about your travel itinerary… had to leave before the conference ended to catch the flight home, not realizing how much time was needed to get to the airport … will not make that mistake again.

The next NPE conference will be my sixth. That first one in Chicago awakened me to the crucial efforts Diane Ravitch, Carol Burris and the NPE board are making.

NPE is our most important organization in America fighting to preserve public education, the foundation of democracy. When we meet in Washington DC October 28 and 29, some of America’s most brilliant educators and leaders will be sharing information and firming up plans for our country. I hope you can be there.

Remember, the way public education fares directly affects how American democracy fares.

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