Miracle schools, vouchers and all that educational flim-flam

is the title of this piece by Diane Ravitch. It appeared at the website of Nieman Watchdog of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, as part of the "Ask This" which is subtitled "Questions the Press Should Ask." Oh if only reporters and writers on education were knowledgeable enough about education to ask questions such as those posed by Ravitch, perhaps we could cut through all the misleading and inaccurate information, the attempts to manipulate the public discourse on education to exclude the voices of those - including both Ravitch (a personal friend) and myself - who say that our supposed pattern of educational "reform" is like the emperor's new clothes - there is no there there, as Gertrude Stein once opined of Oakland.

You should read Ravitch's piece. To whet your appetite, let me offer Diane's first paragraph here, and then explore a bit more below the fold:

Be skeptical of miracle schools. Sometimes their dramatic gains disappear in a year or two or three. Most such claims rely on cheating or gaming the system or on intensive test prep that involves teaching children how to answer test questions. These same children, having learned to take tests, may actually be very poorly educated, even in the subjects where their scores were rising.

Please keep reading.

Diane offers some very tough questions to consider. Understand that as an educational historian and as someone very involved in policy questions, the questions she poses are derived from the record, from extensive reading/research into the information that is actually available. For example:

When a charter school reports miraculous results, be sure to ask about the attrition rate. Some highly successful charters push out low-performing kids and their enrollment falls over the years (and the departing students are not replaced). Recently Arne Duncan hailed a “miracle” school in Chicago—Urban Prep—where all the students who graduated were accepted into college. But 150 students started and only 107 graduated. The 107 graduates had much lower test scores than the average for Chicago public school students. The school did a good job of getting the students into college (perhaps that was a miracle) but they were not better educated than students in the regular public schools.

In another instance, one of the “amazing” schools singled out by the 2010 documentary “Waiting for Superman” admits 140 students, but only 34 graduated. That’s a 75 per cent attrition rate. Some miracle.

Or try the brief paragraph before what I just quoted:

Whenever a district has a dramatic increase in test scores, look for cheating, gaming the system, intensive investment in test prep. Testing is NOT instruction. It is meant to assess instruction, not to substitute for it.

Take this points one at a time

cheating - explore the recent USA Today examination of test results in DC public schools under Michelle Rhee

gaming - the so-called Texas miracle on their state tests, given in tenth grade, was accomplished by holding back lower performing kids in 9th grade. Some were held back several times until they dropped out, and if they said they MIGHT get a GED, they were listed at having transferred to an alternative educational program, not as dropouts. Or perhaps after having been held back one year they were skipped to 11th on the grounds they had made so much progress. In either case, they were not tested. All this was documented BEFORE No Child Left Behind was passed into law, and people in Congress cannot say they were unaware. Walt Haney of Lynch College of Education at Boston College wrote about it, as did others, and a number of us passed on the literature to key people in Congress. Yet somehow Rod Paige won a superintendent's award and got promoted to Secretary of Education, in part because of a claimed 90% graduation rate in Houston schools, when in reality only a bit over 40% of those entering 7th grade graduated with their cohorts.

intensive investment in test prep - these seems to be the pattern in a number of charter schools and some public schools claiming significant gains. But what evidence there is that the "gains" on tests are not maintained in subsequent grades, and students as they ascend the educational grades arrive less and less prepared to do the kind of work necessary to be successful even in a high school course of students, to say nothing of what is necessary in colleges, which is why post-secondary institutions have had to expand the number of places in remediation courses.

Ravitch remind us - at least those of us who have been paying attention - that improving pass rates on state tests may mean merely that states are manipulating their cut scores. It is possible to pass some state tests with less than half the questions answered correctly. Since all that are published are scaled scores, converted from raw scores, unless one can see the conversion formula, the scaled scores are subject to manipulation for all kinds of reasons, including the state (or school district for district wide tests) wanting to be able to show "success" or to avoid the politically unacceptable prospect of large numbers of students not being promoted or not graduating from high school.

Not all "studies" are peer-reviewed by independent scholars. Some are not even rigorous, as Ravitch points out about the claim by Carolyn Hoxby that students who spent 9 years in a NYC charter could close the achievement gap differential between, say, Harlem in inner city NY and Scarsdale, perhaps the wealthiest of the New York suburbs. As Ravitch writes:

The press gave that study huge attention and credibility, but no one noticed that there were very few students who had attended a charter in NYC for nine years or that Hoxby did not provide a number for the students who had closed the gap. It appears that her study was an extrapolation, and it was an extrapolation based on NYC and NY state’s inflated and unreliable test scores (see above). When NYC’s charter scores are reported, they range widely from very abysmal (a six per cent pass rate) to exceptional (100 per cent pass rate).

Ravitch also reminds us of the wisdom of the words spoken by Hal Holbrook in "All the President's Men" - Follow the Money. In the case of education, we have the likes of Philip Anschutz, a billionaire who advocates for free market solutions (and for whom, I might mention, Michael Bennet worked before becoming Superintendent in Denver, and then a US Senator, and now apparently the successor in waiting to Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education). He was a funder of "Waiting for Superman" as was a man "previously CEO of a string of for-profit postsecondary institutions." Similarly, the so-called Democrats for Education Reform has a board full of Wall St. hedge fund managers and big real estate moguls. Ravitch suggests asking why they are so interested in charters, and how they are connected with other 'reform' groups such as" Education Reform Now, Stand for Children, the state CAN organizations (e.g., ConnCAN), and a host of other groups promoting privatization and de-professionalization?" She also reminds us, as she did in her book, about the influence of the 'billionaire boys' club" of foundations such as Gates, Broad and Walton.

No high performing nations, as Ravitch reminds us, are pursuing the kinds of approaches we are seeing advocated by such groups and foundations, and unfortunately by the Obama administration. She challenges the administration with a number of questions, on continuing Bush administration accountability problems, on school choice, on merit pay (which lacks any supportive research base in education or in industry, and has clearly been shown to have no effect on test scores, which of course are the measurement of choice of the so-called reformers). Given the President's recent remarks at Bell Multicultural High School in the District, in response to a question from a student, it is worth noting this question from Ravitch:

Why does the president publicly say he is against standardized testing at the same time that his administration is demanding more emphasis on standardized testing?

Read Ravitch. Perhaps pass on the article to the editors, editorialists, and reporters dealing with education at your publication of choice.

Ravitch concludes her piece with simple statement:

Principles for reporters: Be skeptical; don’t believe in miracles; follow the money.

Perhaps were these principles followed, we might actually be able to have a meaningful public discussion on how to address the real needs and issues confronting our schools and our students.


Perhaps were these principles followed, we might actually be able to have a meaningful public discussion on how to address the real needs and issues confronting our schools and our students.

An incredibly important speech on education by Diane Ravitch

That is a brief clip of Diane Ravitch addressing the Representative Assembly of the National Education Association on July 6, where she was receiving an award as the 2010 "Friend of Education."

Please keep reading.

The complete text of Diane's speech can be read here. She has given me permission to quote as much as I deem appropriate, including the whole speech if necessary.

I won't do that. You can follow the link to read the entire text if so inclined.

Let me offer some selections to at least whet your appetite, as well as offer a bit of commentary of my own.

... in all of this time, aside from the right-wing think tanks, I haven’t seen met a single teacher who likes what’s happening? I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that No Child Left Behind has been a success. I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that Race to the Top is a good idea.

I remind readers that the Representative Assembly passed a resolution of no confidence in Race to the Top.

And as I talk to teachers, by the end of my talk, I hear the same questions again and again: What can we do? How can we stop the attacks on teachers and on the teaching profession? Why is the media demonizing unions? Why does the media constantly criticize public schools? And why does it lionize charter schools? Why is Arne Duncan campaigning with Newt Gingrich? Why has the Obama Administration built its education agenda on the punitive failed strategies of No Child Left Behind?

Newt Gingrich - now there's a great ally for a supposedly progressive administration, eh? And during the campaign, Obama railed against NCLB, yet too much of the administration policy continues to rely on the failed policies of that approach.

I will continue to speak out against high-stakes testing. It undermines education. High-stakes testing promotes cheating, gaming the system, teaching to bad tests, narrowing the curriculum. High-stakes testing means less time for the arts, less time for history or geography or civics or foreign languages or science.

We see schools across America dropping physical education. We see them dropping music. We see them dropping their arts programs, their science programs, all in pursuit of higher test scores. This is not good education.

I have been told by some people in the Obama Administration that the way to stop the narrowing of the curriculum is to test everything. In fact, the chancellor in Washington, D.C., the other day announced she plans to do exactly that. That means less time for instruction, more time for testing, and a worse education for everyone.

Some of us have worried about this trend for years - I remember a group of elementary school art teachers asking their state for a test on art so their classes would not be eliminated. As it happens, my course is one in which there is a test that has high stakes - students in theory must not only pass a government course but also a state test in government in order to graduate from high school (although the latter requirement has some loopholes). Let me say that for too many students their course in government gets reduced, especially in the Spring as the test approaches, to drill and kill, practice for the test. For a subject that should excite them, because it has direct affect on their lives, they get bored and frustrated.

In speaking out, I have consistently warned about the riskiness of school choice. Its benefits are vastly overstated. It undercuts public education by enabling charter schools to skim the best students in poor communities. As our society pursues these policies, we will develop a bifurcated system, one for the haves, another for the have-nots, and politicians have the nerve to boast about such an outcome.

Public schools, as I said before, are a cornerstone of our democratic society. If we chip away at support for them, we erode communal responsibility for a vital public institution.

Bifurcated - even worse than what we have by geography, where wealthy communities have excellent public schools rich in resources and the students have access to all kinds of elective courses, and poor communities, whether in inner cities, inner rings of suburbs or the hinterlands, lacking equipment, with decaying buildings, and overwhelmed with students arriving st school with less background and current problems.

democratic society - if we really believe in it, economics would not be the sole basis on which we make arguments about our schools.

Last year, a major evaluation showed that one out of every six charters will get better results, five out of six charters will get no different results or worse results than the regular public schools. A report released just a couple of weeks ago by Mathematica Policy Research once again shows charter middle schools do not get better results than regular public middle schools.

Unfortunately, the general media coverage of the Mathematica report was badly flawed, focused on the schools that did 'better' while not including any of the caveats about even these schools. Charters COULD be used to offer alternative ways of teaching/learning to specific groups of students. Diane's next two paragraphs are very important:

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, on whose board I served for seven years, has tested charter schools since 2003. In 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, charter schools were compared to regular public schools and have never shown an advantage over regular public schools. Charter schools, contrary to Bill Gates, are not more innovative than regular public schools. The business model and methods of charter schools is this — longer school days, longer hours, longer weeks, and about 95 percent of charter schools are non-union.

Teachers are hired and fired at will. Teachers work 50, 60, 70 hours a week. They are expected to burn out after two or three years when they can be replaced. No pension worries, no high salaries. This is not a template for American education.

NAEP is the national report card on education. It is considered the gold standard of educational evaluation. It does not show that charters do better. One reason why some "reformers" like charters is that in many states they are a way around unions, and their teachers can be fired at will.


Let me skip down a bit:

And perhaps we should begin demanding that school districts be held accountable for providing the resources that schools need. Just like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top requires and pressures districts to close low-performing schools. The overwhelming majority of low-performing schools enroll students in poverty and students who don’t speak English and students who are homeless and transient. Very often, these schools have heroic staffs who are working with society’s neediest children. These teachers deserve praise, not pink slips. Closing schools weakens communities. It’s not a good idea to weaken communities. No school was ever improved by closing it.

Reread that please. Yes, you will read stories that supposedly focus on "high-performing" schools dealing with such students. In some cases the claims for high performance are based on selective use of data. In most cases the schools on which such focus is made get more resources (as do many charters), have longer days, etc. The "success" is claimed on the basis of test scores. What is not yet offered is any evidence that there are long-term gains in learning: that the students are developing skills and knowledge that they can apply outside of the test environment. Meanwhile we reconstitute schools. We use one of the four models approved by this administration, even though NONE has any research to demonstrate that they improve education.

There are passages about the right to unionize, which Diane supports, but which "reformers" oppose. Read this paragraph, and perhaps you will understand two things, (1) why teachers are reacting so positively towards Diane; and (2) why we feel unfairly besieged, that the playing field is tilted:

I have spoken out repeatedly to defend the right of teachers to join unions for their protection and the protection of the teaching profession. Teachers have a right to a collective voice in the political process. It’s the American way. I don’t see the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or the pundits complaining about the charter school lobby. I don’t see them complaining about the investment bankers lobby, or any other group that speaks on behalf of its members. Only teachers’ unions are demonized these days.

Teachers, and those who support them, ARE being demonized. By constrast, Hedge Fund managers (who are making major investments in things like charter schools for tax benefits) and Wall Street Firms (who came close to destroying the economy of this nation and the international community) get bailed out with our tax dollars, continue to pay bonuses, and spend millions to prevent appropriate oversight and regulation. Then they want to have a voice telling us how we should teach, how our schools should be run.

There is so much of value in the speech. By now I hope I have at least convinced you to take the time to read the entire thing.

Let me offer only a few more snippets, skipping over some very important material:

Around the world, those nations that are successful recognize that the best way to improve school is to improve the education profession. We need expert teachers, not a steady influx of novices.

One argument against Teach for America, for example. Now if those in that program actually stayed in teaching, people like Ravitch and me would have far fewer objections. The constant turnover in the schools in which they serve is unfair to those kids. The program benefits many in the TFA corps, and it certainly benefits TFA. It is not clear that the students are getting all that much benefit, and the model is not something that can really address the needs of the millions of students in inner city and rural schools.

The current so-called reform movement is pushing bad ideas. No high-performing nation in the world is privatizing its schools, closing its schools, and inflicting high-stakes testing on every subject on its children. The current reform movement wants to end tenure and seniority, to weaken the teaching profession, to silence teachers’ unions, to privatize large sectors of public education. Don’t let it happen.

The consequences of letting these "reforms" go forward unchallenged will be great damages far beyond the arena of public education. It will be further destruction of what is left of the union movement in this country. It will be increased privatization of what is left of the commons in this country/ It will be a narrowing of opportunity for too many of our young people. It will diminish us as a people as our young people receive narrower and narrower educations.

Diane urges those listening to her to be politically active, to remind people that there are millions of teachers, we vote, and so do our families, to not support anyone who is an opponent of public education.

Stand up to the attacks on public education. Don’t give them half a loaf, because they will be back the next day for another slice, and the day after that for another slice.

Don’t compromise. Stand up for teachers. Stand up public education, and say “No mas, no mas." Thank you.

Diane Ravitch received a rousing ovation for this speech. As a teacher, as a UNIONIZED teacher in a public school, I understand why.

I thought it important that as many people as possible encounter HER words, not just cursory news accounts. I think it important that voices that speak for teachers and for public schools be given as much of an audience as those who have described themselves as 'reformers' and seek to suppress or denigrate any opposing point of view.

That is why I asked Diane, a friend, if I could quote extensively. That is why Diane told me "You are free to cite or quote whatever you wish."

Thanks for reading.

Please pass on the link for her speech.

Peace.

Education - Mayoral control is NOT the answer

cross posted from Daily Kos

I was not a supporter of the selection of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education, but I was willing to withhold judgment, to see where he would attempt to take the nation in education policy. I thought perhaps policy might be made in the White House, with him serving as the public face. I was wrong. Duncan is attempting to drive education in ways that will destructive. Many of the policies he is pushing demonstrate his fundamental lack of understanding.

Today I will briefly explore the issue of mayoral control of big city school systems. Remember, such is Duncan's experience in years in Chicago. He started as an assistant to Paul Vallas in a system controlled directly by Mayor Richie Daley, succeeding him in that position for a number of years before being tapped by his basketball buddy, the new President, to head our national educational efforts.

In this exploration I am going to rely on an op ed in yesterdays New York Times entitled Mayor Bloomberg’s Crib Sheet, by Diane Ravitch.

Diane Ravitch is currently a research professor of education at New York University. One of her books is The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973. Trained as an educational historian, she served as Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander from 1991 to 1993, where she was responsible for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education. As Assistant Secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of state and national academic standards. She holds positions as a senior researcher simultaneously at Hoover and at Brookings. She has become an outspoken critic of No Child Left Behind. While I do not always agree with her, I consider her a friend. And before we start with her op ed, I have to put you on notice: she is NOT a fan of Duncan, having recently described him as "Margaret Spellings in drag."


Ravitch begins by noting Duncan's call for mayors to take control of the nation's school and of his pointing at New York City as an example. She then writes

Actually, the record on mayoral control of schools is unimpressive. Eleven big-city school districts take part in the federal test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Two of the lowest-performing cities — Chicago and Cleveland — have mayoral control. The two highest-performing cities — Austin, Tex., and Charlotte, N.C. — do not.

Stop for a moment, remember that Chicago has had mayoral control of its schools since Paul Vallas was put in place by Daley in 1995, with Duncan succeeding him in 2001. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is considered the best single, independent measure of school performance we have. Let me quote from the linked Wikipedia article to provide a bit of context:

NAEP conducts assessments periodically in mathematics, reading, writing, science, and other areas.[1] New assessments in world history and in foreign language are anticipated in 2012.[2]
NAEP is administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a division of the US Department of Education.
Since NAEP assessments are administered uniformly to all participating students using the same test booklets and identical procedures across the nation, NAEP results serve as a common metric for all states and selected urban districts that take the assessment. The assessment stays essentially the same from year to year, with only carefully documented changes. NAEP reports all results at the national level and provides state results for some assessments. On a trial basis, NAEP is releasing the results for a number of large urban districts.
NAEP results are based on representative samples of students at grades 4, 8, and 12 for the main assessments, or samples of students at ages 9, 13, or 17 years for the long-term trend assessments. These grades and ages were chosen because they represent critical junctures in academic achievement. NAEP provides data on subject-matter achievement, instructional experiences, and school environment for populations of students (e.g., all fourth-graders) and groups within those populations (e.g., female students, Hispanic students). NAEP does not provide scores for individual students or schools, although state NAEP can report results for selected large urban districts.

Educational researchers consider the main NAEP the best single indicator of educational performance over time. There is somewhat less confidence in the accuracy of what is known as state NAEP, especially since participation became mandatory in 2001 with the passage of No Child Left Behind. State NAEP scores provide a check on claims by states for improvement on their own state assessments, those state assessments being used to determine Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB.

Two quick comments about what NAEP has shown before we return to Ravitch. First, an examination of NAEP scores completely destroys the idea of any Texas miracle in education during the 6 years G. W. Bush was governor - and remember, it was that Texas miracle that was used to sell the nation on NCLB. The Nation's Report Card, as NAEP is sometimes described, showed no improvement for Texas in the 1990s, and has shown little improvement in the 6+ years since NCLB went into effect. Second, Duncan spent 7 years in charge of Chicago schools in a system of mayoral control that predated him by another 6 years. Vallas was cited by Clinton for raising test scores, but (a) the scores that were raised were a selective set of Illinois tests, not consistent across all of the state tests, and the city showed little progress on NAEP. As we return of Ravitch remember her point - that of the 11 urban districts participating in NAEP for separate scoring, the two lowest scoring were under mayoral control while the two highest were not. And Chicago, after 13+ years of mayoral control, including more than 7 under Duncan, was at the bottom.

I cited the one book by Ravitch because writing it provided her with probably more knowledge about the history of schools in New York City than anyone else in the country. Diane was trained as an educational historian, and IIRC, her dissertation was supervised by perhaps the greatest historian of education we have had, Lawrence Cremins. While I will sometimes disagree with the conclusions she draws, she is a solid researcher on educational history. When evidence proves her previous ideas to be inaccurate, she will acknowledge and correct them, as she is doing in the book on which she is currently working.

Duncan recently came to New York to urge renewal of the state statute, passed in 2002, that gives the mayor control of the schools in New York City. That law expires at the end of this school year. Ravitch points out two key things to know about NYC schools

1. Mayoral control is nothing new: "From 1873 to 1969, the mayor appointed every single member of the Board of Education. The era of decentralization from 1969 to 2002 was an aberration, because the mayor had only two appointees on a seven-member board."

2. The control over schools Bloomberg currently has is unrivaled in the city's history, with previous mayors respecting the independence of school board members they appointed. By contrast, "The present version of the board, the Panel on Education Policy, serves at the pleasure of the mayor and rubber-stamps the policies and spending practices of the Department of Education, which is run by Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein."

Let me deviate from Ravitch a bit. One of the ironies of mayoral control has been the pattern of appointing people to run schools who really lack the background as professional educators one might expect. I teach in Maryland. A superintendent must meet certain qualifications in order to head one of our 24 school divisions (23 counties and the City of Baltimore). One of those requirements is a doctorate in education, although that State Superintendent can waive some of the requirements (and Superintendent Nancy Grasmick, who herself started as a teacher, has done so). Ever since Seattle experienced some success with hiring a non-educator to run their schools, mayors and governors have somehow thought such an approach was the solution to the seemingly intractable problems of urban education. But retired Maj. Gen. John Stanford was sui generis, and the success he had in Seattle has not been duplicated by similar appointments, whether of Generals (Julius Becton in DC), former Governors (Roy Romer in Los Angeles), financial managers (Paul Vallas in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans), or lawyers (Duncan in Chicago and Joel Klein in New York). [Michelle Rhee in DC did spend several years in a classroom with Teach for America, during which time by her own admission she was a lousy teacher until near the end of her second year. Her subsequent experience was running The New Teacher Project, a non-profit that was one of many spinoffs from the TFA family. Her highest degree is a Masters in Public Policy]

Ravitch - and remember her background and her responsibilities in the US Dept of Education - examines the claims of supporter of the Bloomberg-Klein regime of spectacular improvements. They argue for approval without change of the current law. She quotes Sec. Duncan

I’m looking at the data here in front of me,” he said while in New York. “Graduation rates are up. Test scores are up ... By every measure, that’s real progress.”

Except that claim is unsupported by independent measures:

On the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress — widely acknowledged as the gold standard of the testing industry — New York City showed almost no academic improvement between 2003, when the mayor’s reforms were introduced, and 2007. There were no significant gains for New York City’s students — black, Hispanic, white, Asian or lower-income — in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading or eighth-grade mathematics. In fourth-grade math, pupils showed significant gains (although the validity of this is suspect because an unusually large proportion — 25 percent — of students were given extra time and help). The federal test reported no narrowing of the achievement gap between white students and minority students.

When supporters of the Klein regime try to point to scores on state tests, which have improved, Ravitch responds:

indeed, the state scores have soared in recent years, not only in the city but also across New York state However, the statewide scores on the N.A.E.P. are as flat as New York City’s. Our state tests are, unfortunately, exemplars of grade inflation.

She also points out how other measures, such as graduation rates reported by the city schools, do not indicate improvement:

The city says the rate climbed to 62 percent from 53 percent between 2003 and 2007; the state’s Department of Education, which uses a different formula, says the city’s rose to 52 percent, from 44 percent. Either way, the city’s graduation rate is no better than that of Mississippi, which spends about a third of what New York City spends per pupil.

Moreover, the city’s graduation rates have been pumped up with a variety of dubious means, like “credit recovery,” in which students who fail a course can get full credit if they agree to take a three-day makeup program or turn in an independent project. In addition, the city counts as graduates the students who dropped out and obtained a graduate-equivalency degree.

Let me step back for a moment. First, remember the requirement of NCLB to participate in NAEP. This was required precisely to serve as a check on state's manipulating their own tests to "show improvement." One can establish a first year cut score (the raw score which represents passing) to show a low pass rate, then lower the cut score to show" "improvement" even if the raw scores have not changed. I experienced that in the one year I taught middle school in Virginia. The year before I arrived our school had a 58% pass rate on middle school American History. The year I was there, with the other two teachers being first year teachers and me being new to the curriculum, our pass rate was 81%, which seems to be a spectacular improvement. Except that the cut scores were changed to have a more acceptable passing rate - if we had restated the previous year's scores according to the new pass rate, it would have been about 71-72% - we improved, but not that much. And of course, we were comparing two different cohorts of students.

The manipulation of graduation rates is a well-known phenomenon. We saw it in Texas during the tenure of Gov. Bush, especially in Houston under Rod Paige. Students would be held back, sometimes more than once, in th grade (because the Texas tests were in 10th grade), until they dropped out, then they would not be listed as a drop out if you could get them to say they might go eventually for a GED, instead being listed as transferring to an alternative educational program. All this was in this professional literature in work by Walt Haney BEFORE NCLB was passed into law near the beginning of Bush's first term.

Let's return to Ravitch. She notes that the NY figures do not include as dropouts those listed as discharged during their hs years:

Some discharges are legitimate, like students who moved to another school district. But many others are so-called push-outs, students who were ejected from school even though they had a legal right to be there, often because their grades and test scores were bringing down their schools’ averages. The Department of Education refuses to disclose how many students are in each of these categories. We do know, however, that more than one-fifth of the members of the class of 2007, or 18,524 students, were discharged and not counted as dropouts.

One point to bear in mind is that Ravitch is not totally opposed to some level of mayoral involvement in the governance of schools. She is opposed to the model one sees in NYC, in which there is no oversight of the actions taken by the mayor and his designee, and hence no public participation in s school governance. She is willing to have the mayor appoint the members of the Board of Education for fixed terms,

Candidates for the board should be evaluated by a blue-ribbon panel so that no mayor can stack it with friends. That board should appoint the chancellor, and his or her first responsibility must be to the children and their schools, not to the mayor.

What a remarkable idea - the head of the school system has as first responsibility the children. If one returns to the history of Paul Vallas, for example, one finds him finishing second in 2001 (to Blagojevich and ahead of Burris) for the Democratic nominee for Governor of Illinois, has since considered running again in 2010 and has announced that he plans to run this year for the Cook County Board as a Republican. Reasonable people might well question his dedication to the children that should have been his primary responsibility.

Ravitch believes that school boards need to make their decision in public, subject to public scrutiny. She further advocates for some level of parental control, writing

Local school boards composed of parent leaders should oversee the schools in their districts, although they should not have any financial authority.

She wants independent auditing to evaluate claims of improvements in test scores and graduation rates. The current New York law has none of these features. Instead all power resides within the hands of a chancellor / ceo, Joel Klein, who is answerable only to the mayor. So far that model has not proven successful, and yet that is what Duncan wants to propagate across the nation, perhaps because that is his own personal experience, an experience which has not shown positive results.

If our schools are truly public schools, they should be answerable to the public. Their governance should be democratic. The model of mayoral control, especially as implemented in New York City, meets neither of these criteria. By itself that should be sufficient reason to reject that model of governance. The model is further undercut by the lack of success that can be demonstrated by independent evaluation, not only in New York, but also in Chicago under the leadership of Duncan and of his predecessor.

Let me offer the final paragraph penned by Ravitch in this piece:

Not every school problem can be solved by changes in governance. But to establish accountability, transparency and the legitimacy that comes with public participation, the Legislature should act promptly to restore public oversight of public education. As we all learned in civics class, checks and balances are vital to democracy.

checks and balances are vital to democracy - we have just escaped from an 8 year administration that did not believe it should be subject to checks and balances, and we came close to destroying our economy and our international standing as a result of actions taken without such checks and balances. If nothing else, we should have learned that no public function can be trusted to people who are not subject to checks and balances. Our public schools should be preparing our children not only to be employed, but to be participating citizens in a representative liberal democracy. The model of governance advocated by Duncan is opposed to that. By itself that should be sufficient reason to reject it. And it does not work, as both his experience in Chicago and the tenure of Joel Klein in New York demonstrate.

Peace.