Category — Federal

New doubts about the Chicago Public School's performance pay system for teachers make it clearer that Colorado is desperately trying to recreate a failure.  

An early analysis of the system from Mathematica Policy Research "found no evidence that the program raised student test scores."    The system "did not have a detectable impact on rates of teacher retention" either, according to the study.

Why should we care in Colorado?  Because our entire anything-but-teaching education reform effort now centers on doing whatever U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan did while he was chief of Chicago's public schools.  He started the new performance pay system.

We already know that he misled America about the academic results he got in Chicago's schools.  This is just more evidence that his miraculous results in Chicago are no more real than the so-called Houston Miracle that led President Bush to pick Roderick Paige as his secretary of education.

The continuing and growing doubts about Chicago should get us thinking.  Maybe we should work on really improving our schools, rather than blindly following the latest "reform" fad.  

Not likely.  For one thing it would cost us money to make sure every child in Colorado gets a good education.  And we're broke.  Blindly following the Duncan Dream could actually make us money.  Last week the state reapplied for a Big Cash Prize in Duncan's Race for the Top contest.  Winning could get us $175 million.

There's a catch, of course.  We can use the money to restore any of our cuts or to teach students, it all has to go to "reform" administration costs.

On the plus side, wining doesn't require educating students, all we have to do is convince the Secretary that we'll adopt his free-market-solves-everything education ideology without asking any questions.

One question we're consistently not asking is "Race to the what?"

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Colorado could get up to $350 million from the federal government to avoid laying off teachers, without having to enter a contest.  That amount could avoid nearly all of the cuts for next school year, if it comes through in time.

The money is in a bill the U.S. House will soon be debating.  As of now, the bill would divvy up $23 billion among all 50 states.  A preliminary estimate puts Colorado's share at about $350 million.

Of course the bill would have to pass for us to get the money, but at least it's a possibility.

The catch?  It's only for one year.  Our cuts to K-12 are permanent, so we'd still eliminate the jobs — just a year after we thought.  

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You’ve probably heard what Yogi Berra once said about a restaurant in St. Louis: "Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded." 

I heard Newt Gingrich on NPR this morning saying pretty much the same thing about the public option in health care reform. 

Gingrich has that way of sounding like he’s just offering friendly advice.   In this case, his friendly advice to President Obama is to drop the public option because the American people just don’t want it.

He says the American people are opposed to the public option because if we get a choice, so many of us will choose the public option that it will drive insurance companies out of business.  In short, nobody likes the public option, it’s too popular. 

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This should be interesting.  The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee is asking insurers to report some finance information, like how much their executives earn, the company’s profits and so on. 

Some of the information is already public, what’s interesting is that the committee is asking the companies to break it out for specific classes of customers, like:

• Self-insured (generally large employers)
• Individuals
• Medicare Advantage
• Medicaid

We often hear that certain segments are unprofitable, but we seldom see the data to back up the claim. Of course, if you can’t trust insurance companies, who can you trust?  Still, it’s nice to see some hard information once in a while.

Dr. Earl Carstensen sent a message suggesting we keep a lookout for the responses, especially for companies that have a lot of customers in Colorado.  Great idea.  If I get them, I’ll post them.  If you stumble across any of the responses, please pass them on.

Insurance companies aren’t happy about the request.  Through their front group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, they’re calling it an attempt to "shift the debate to focus on the health insurance industry rather than solutions on health care."

Apparently the insurance companies are irritated that the Committee might try to shift the debate.  Who would do something like that? 

How about the companies America’s Health Insurance Plans fronts: companies like UnitedHealth, Aetna and WellPoint.  Business Week is reporting that their lobbyists have already won the health reform battle. 

In last week’s cover story, the magazine says insurance giants are confidant that the final bill will give them the biggest benefits.  It’s easy to see how.  The final "reform" might force us all to buy insurance from those companies without any competition from a "public option."  That’s a great deal for the insurance industry.

The industry’s strategy, according to Business Week, was to woo the Blue Dog Democrats.  They control enough votes to decide if a bill lives or dies. The lobbyists convinced the Blue Dogs that what’s good for insurance companies is good for America.  Now they just sit back and watch Congress play out the script. 

No wonder they don’t want anyone shifting the debate, again.

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The old comedy Caddyshack has a hilarious exchange between a kid who's hoping to get a scholarship and a judge (played by Ted Knight) who sits on the scholarship award committee.

If you don't feel like watching the clip, here's the gist of it:

Danny Noonan: I planned to go to law school after I graduated, but it looks like my folks won't have enough money to put me through college.
Judge Smails: Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.

I keep thinking of that when I hear about Race to the Top, the Obama Administration's nationwide contest for school funding.  States compete on a range of criteria and the winners get big cash awards from a $4.35 billion pot of prize money.  The losers?  Well, "the world needs ditch diggers too."

Apparently someone, probably Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, decided that all No Child Left Behind (NCLB) needed was prize money.  I guess we should have seen this coming.  When Duncan got the job he said he wanted to make NCLB less punitive. Now schools that don't measure up won't get punished, they just won't get rewarded. <!more>

The news media have greeted Duncan with the same kind of glorification they gave to George W. Bush's first education secretary, Roderick Paige.  Paige rode into Washington on the merits of his Houston Miracle, the incredible improvement in Houston schools while he was superintendent.  The excitement cooled when people discovered that the incredible results lacked credibility.  All Paige had done was induce his underlings to falsify results and lie; he did it by promising great rewards (thousands of dollars in cash bonuses) for reporting great results, and terrible consequences (quick termination) for reporting the truth.  He supported that policy by rigorously ignoring even the most obvious misrepresentations.

Paige may have been following the lead of Houston's previous miracle, Enron.  It's amazing what the promise of riches and the threat of punishment will get people to do.  Enron rewarded employees for adding zeros to inflate earnings, Paige rewarded employees for reporting zeros to hide dropouts.  The consequences in both cases encouraged employees to keep mum about the deceptions. 

Other school districts have been caught doing essentially the same thing.

In Duncan's case, the plaudits are based on his accomplishments as founder of an elementary school and then superintendent of schools in Chicago.  Duncan and the Administration never call his accomplishments the Chicago Miracle, but the comiarason might not be out of line.  The White House claims Duncan's school, Ariel Community Academy, is one of the best in Chicago and that, as superintendent, he improved student performance all over the district.  Chicago's a tough town.  It would be a miracle if he really turned around a district of that size is such a short period of time. 

Unfortunately, the hype isn't supported by the reality.  A new report by The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago pokes some holes in Duncan's record. The report's entitled "Still Left Behind," and it points out that  most students still drop out or fail.  It says the "general perception" that students are doing better has more to do with changes in the standardized tests than in the level of education.

A more troubling observation is that the students who are doing well are concentrated in "selective-enrollment" schools. 

Before becoming CEO of the district, Duncan started Ariel Community Academy. It's financially supported by (and named after) a mutual fund company.  In Black on the Block: the Politics of Race and Class in the City, Northwestern Professor Mary E. Pattillo notes that students at Ariel come from richer and better educated families than those at the public schools, and that Ariel has an admissions process that could keep struggling students out.  

If that's the case, Duncan's work just adds to the evidence that well-funded, exclusive schools score well on standardized tests.  Ignore, pushout or exclude the bottom 10% of students and any school will look pretty good.  

Duncan's credentials might not matter much if the Race to the Top rules reflected the president's pitch for it:

"This competition will not be based on politics, ideology, or the preferences of a particular interest group. Instead, it will be based on a simple principle—whether a state is ready to do what works." Obama said.

Nice thought, but the fine print doesn't fit the statement.  For instance, one key to qualifying for the grand prize is having the right "conditions for reform."  "Reform" in this case, means opening more charter schools and giving them more money.  It requires that people in school districts vote to give charter schools more tax money, even if their children can't attend the charter school.

There's a provision that is particularly painful in Colorado.  We, as a policy, don't help schools with capital costs, like building and repairing school buildings.  There are two exceptions.  As a settlement in a lawsuit we give some especially poor districts money to improve especially dangerous conditions in old school buildings.  And we give millions of dollars a year to charter schools for capital, whether they need it or not.

That last exception is a testament to the power of the charter school lobby and our general indifference to conditions under which students in poor districts spend their school days.  One might think that "reform" would reverse that, but Race to the Top reform makes it official, national policy.  One criteria for getting a grant is: 

The extent to which the State provides charter schools with facilities funding (for leasing facilities, purchasing facilities, or making tenant improvements), assistance with facilities acquisition, access to public facilities, the ability to share in bonds and mill levies, or other supports; and the extent to which the State does not impose any facility-related requirements on charter schools that are stricter than those applied to traditional public schools.

A non-ideological approach might make that work both ways.  It could require states to pay as much for capital projects at public schools as it does for capital projects at charter schools. Apparently helping regular public schools isn't real "reform." 

In fairness, there's another criteria that would seem to impose a little rigor on our charter schools:

The extent to which the State has statutes and guidelines regarding how charter school authorizers approve, monitor, hold accountable, reauthorize, and close charter schools, including the extent to which such statutes or guidelines require that student academic achievement be a factor in such activities and decisions, and the extent to which charter school authorizers in the State have closed or not renewed ineffective charter schools.

We've been through this in Colorado.  Charter schools are run by small groups of people and intentionally operate outside of the regular school system. Occasionally a parent or teacher will squeal when a charter school is cheating on tests or otherwise undermining accountability, but not always.  And even when evidence is clear there are often politically powerful people and groups who will come to the school's defense. In the end, a lack of achievement can be chalked up to a less-than-successful innovation without any consenquences for the school.

Ultimately, Race to the Top is just a new way of pushing states into the failed framework of NCLB.  The contest part adds a comic and less punitive element, but it's also adding onto, rather than replacing, the high-stakes testing and punishment that came with NCLB.  The combination of reward and punishment may get results, but it's more likely to get them the Houston Miracle way than by really improving education.

The so-called free-market approach to education is inherently contradictory.  The free market responds to people who can pay, people who can analyze the value of various choices take advantage of them.  The children of those people are already getting a good education.  The children who need help most often don't have the money or the resources to take advantage of choices.  The problem is exacerbated when there are incentives for schools to erect barriers and keep those kids out.

Failing to educate every child has always been wrong.  It's un-American.  It's even more wrong today.  There was a time when people without an education could work, earn a living and even build a career in America.  That's no longer true.  Today we really don't need very many ditch diggers.

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An interest rate of 0% to 0.25%?  Sounds great, doesn't it.  The Federal Reserve just announced that's what it's going to continue charging banks that need to borrow money to meet their reserve requirements.

Yeah, the same banks that issue us credit cards and consumer loans.  The same banks that are fighting to keep Congress from protecting consumers against even the worst credit card company abuses.

If Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had a sense of humor, he'd announce the 0% federal funds rate for banks, but not before pulling out the CardHolder Agreement from his credit card company.

Then he'd mention that the 0% is just the "teaser rate."  The actual rate would be 18.9% and it would kick in after 90 days, or the first time a bank fell short of its reserve requirement and needed to borrow money.  In the latter case, though, the new interest rate would be 24%.  And it would apply to previous loans to the bank.

Want more information?  Here's a list of resources.

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President Bush sold his education credentials to America by selling Secretary of Education Roderick Paige and his "Houston Miracle."  Like all miracles, the one in Houston isn’t holding up under scruitny, and it ought to call into question the basic policies of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

The Houston Miracle started unraveling when the contradictions between the official reports and the real world became too big to ignore.  An assistant principal named Robert Kimball, for example, noticed that his school’s official dropout rate was zero.  That would catch people’s attention at any big high school in the country.  It caught Kimball’s attention because he had personally spoken to students who told him they were dropping out.

Kimball poked around a bit and discovered the secret behind the official dropout rate of zero: it was a lie.  And it wasn’t the only one. Turns out that falsifying about the number of dropouts had become an almost official policy in the Houston School District. 

And false reporting wasn’t the only way schools burnished their records.  Some schemes were downright ingenious. An investigation uncovered a system schools used to keep some kids from ever taking the critical 10th grade standardized tests.  They would hold them back as 9th graders, in some cases for years.   Then, when they couldn’t plausibly keep them in 9th grade any longer, they would promote them right past 10th grade and into 11th grade.  That led to an odd contradiction between student performance as measured by the state tests and the performance measured by national tests.

It gets worse.

Back in 2001 people in Houston read news reports about a horrible incident at a high school.  One student forced another student, a disabled girl, into a boys bathroom, dragged from her wheelchair and raped her.  It’s the kind of horrifying, violent crime that sticks in people’s memories.  People, that is, who didn’t work for the school district.  The school reported, and the district accepted, a perfect record of no violent incidents that year.  A former teacher in the district says her principal didn’t want any incidents reported because it would "make the school look bad."

Under the policies Paige put into effect, looking bad had consequences: principals could lose performance bonuses worth thousands of dollars and, instead, get fired.

A state audit has uncovered all kinds of lies and deceptions — enough to entirely discredit Paige’s Houston Miracle.  After factoring in the truth, the audit recommended lowering the quality rank of 14 out of 16 top-rated schools in Houston.  The recommendation is to drop them from the best rating to the worst. 

Falsifying records is bad, there’s no question about that.  But from a strictly amoral point of view, Paige did achieve something startling in Houston.  The phony data came from a lot of people spread over dozens of schools. The absurdity of the reports couldn’t have escaped administrators in the central office.   How did Paige get them all working together to create the big lie?

For the answer to that, we can turn to another Houston disaster: Enron.  Make the rewards big enough and the penalties harsh enough and people will report whatever you want them to.  It’s not right, but it’s inevitable.  Of course it helps to hear what you want to hear without questioning even the most outlandish claims.

All of this is, of course, awful for Houston.  It might end there, but George W. Bush got elected president and put Paige in charge of education policy for all of America.  That’s led to a series of unfortunate events.  The lies and deceptions in Paige’s district became the Houston Miracle.  The Houston Miracle became the evidence supporting No Child Left Behind and now NCLB is the law for every school district in America.

That means what happened in Houston will likely happen all across the country.  The same policies often yield the same results.  And the results from policies like those in NCLB are remarkably consistent.

The education commissioner in New York City has been getting praise for improving student performance with the same kind of no-nonsense policies Paige used in Houston.   The dropout rate has dropped considerably.  Unfortunately, just like in Houston, the number of students leaving school hasn’t changed, just the reporting.  New York is doing it with with a special category of former students. In addition to graduates and dropouts, the district has "pushouts": students who are told to leave school and not come back.  It’s harsh, but it looks good on paper.  When it comes to rating schools in New York, graduates are good, dropouts are bad and, as a matter of policy, pushouts don’t show up in the data.. 

We use high-stakes testing here in Colorado.  Does that mean we’re getting deceptive reports too?  I’d like to think not, but that would be a miracle.

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