On this date in 1969 it was a good day for the Navy as Pete Conrad and Alan Bean of Apollo 12 became the second team to visit the Moon. Among other work they brought back some parts from an unmanned spacecraft that had used their same landing site a few years earlier.
In education, whistling past the graveyard? Charter school supporters and reformers more generally are still parsing Hillary Clinton’s charter school remarks like Kremlinologists looking for little clues or signals. Meanwhile, Randi Weingarten is emerging as the campaign’s surrogate on charter schools. Hello people!
Clinton ed policy lead Ann O’Leary says Clinton is really for charter schools. RiShawn Biddle says not so fast. Meanwhile, most Americans say, “I just told a pollster I support them, but what is a charter school anyway?” And, “what are we going to do about ISIS?”
Chad Aldeman says, wait, don’t take your eye off teacher effectiveness policy!
Should be noted that compared to the Republicans the Democratic debate is a veritable symposium on education policy these days….
Last week I moderated a discussion with Kaya Henderson about Washington, D.C. and her five years here. That link will take you to video. We talked about the schools but also the experiences she’s had in this role. Don’t miss Ed Trust’s Sonja Santelises’ intro.
Ed First on what now after RTT. Pensions and intergenerational transfer. School choice and anti-semitism. When disruption isn’t. Peter Hoffman on under-adressing over-testing.
Gates Foundation getting into teacher prep.
ESEA deal looks promising at this point on the Hill. Only things that seem like they could derail would be a conservative revolt (the bill doesn’t have a lot of conservative elements and revolts always possible there these days even on routine stuff) or opposition by pro-accountability (doesn’t have a lot of that either) Dems like Murphy, Warren, and Booker. The enormous counterweight on the Dem side? Clearing this off the decks for Hillary Clinton so she can have a cleaner education message heading into a general election and checking Duncan, surprising amount of animosity there. Anyway, it’s all about the kids…
Paul Hill on John Chubb.
Can’t watch video on this work station, but did you ask Kaya why she did not do a serious inquiry into cheating on tests during the RHEE administration?
David,
she followed the advice of Elvis Costello:
“Let’s talk about the future,
now we’ve put the past away.”
“Less Than Zero” My Aim Is True
Can we all put the past away and hide and deny our failures while pointing out and dwelling on the failures of others? By the way, I line in Sacramento and saw Rhee at a parade with her sexual harasser husband and she looked terrible. Skinny like a tweeker.
I agree that it’s too early to make a final assessment on Race to the Top. But every time a “report” is published as to its efficacy that omits any mention of the awful NAEP data from participating states, I intend to show such data, making clear that overall no progress was made from 2009-2015. The blindness of many adulatory retrospectives on RTT to this fundamental failing is indefensible.
http://sandykress.weebly.com/blog/did-states-race-to-the-top
misNAEPery, Sandy?
http://morganpolikoff.com/2015/10/06/friends-dont-let-friends-misuse-naep-data/
I’m simply pointing out that on average, and with few exceptions, overall there are virtually no scale score gains in NAEP in the largest state participants in RTT from 2009-2015. This is a simple fact. As to its significance, its cause, and its relationship to influences within or without the RTT program, I have not opined. I am simply insisting that the numbers be portrayed for people to see and study. I can hardly think it’s “misNAEPery,” to point to the data and challenge others to note it and deal with it.
DC a Success? Think again:
‘Not a success story’
But for some, the PARCC scores is just another indication of how Henderson’s five-year run shouldn’t be seen as such a win for students.
“I just don’t think it’s an overarching success story,” says Peter McPherson, who lives on Capitol Hill. His daughter attended and graduated from DCPS, and he’s battled with her on many issues over the years. He concedes that under her leadership students are generally doing better, but adds a caveat.
“You also have to look at the enormous demographic changes that have taken place in the city. We’re a city that’s actually growing, that’s much wealthier than any time in the last half-century, and so a lot of those test score gains can be attributed simply to demographic changes in the city,” he says.
A recent analysis of test scores by D.C.’s chief financial officer backs up what McPherson says: While students have improved across the board, if you subtract demographic changes over the past decade, those gains in achievement are much smaller.
Earlier this year, an assessment of seven years of mayoral control by the National Academy of Sciences came to a related conclusion: While test scores have gone up, the gains have been much bigger among white students than black ones.
“[B]lack and Hispanic students, those with disabilities, those eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, and English-language learners are much more likely to be in the lowest performance categories than other students,” sais the report. “Some improvement is evident since 2009, but more than half of these students still score below proficient.”
McPherson says the inequity in DCPS can also be seen in which schools were modernized first, and which ones get resources. His big pet peeve is school libraries.
“They say that a good school library should have 20 titles per kid. Well there are schools in DCPS, and they aren’t where we’re sitting right now, that have three and four titles per kid,” he says.
Henderson says she’s aware of the achievement gap, and says that DCPS is making strides to minimize it. A recent initiative would put $20 million towards a stand-alone school for boys of color, the group most likely to fall behind their peers.