How money buys education "research"

The Center for American Progress (CAP), which bills itself as a being dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action, recently produced a report titled "Charting New Territory: Tapping Charter Schools to Turn Around The Nation’s Dropout Factories"

The report argues for a more prominent role for charter operators in turning around perennially low-performing high schools. Among its recommendations

the report posits that five steps might improve the likelihood of successful CMO-district partnerships (all of which strengthen the CMO’s position in the district):
1) maximizing theCMO’s autonomy over staffing, budget, curricula, operations, and pedagogy;
2) staffing turnaround schools through creative agreements among education entrepreneurs, unions, charter operators, districts, and states, such as developing thin union contracts;
3) ensuring district financial support for turnaround schools;
4) relaxing state and district administrative regulations around staffing, funding, and school operations; and
5) cultivating public will for such partnerships.

At this point, you might be wondering why a progressive think tank is advocating such right wing policies that have been proven to be unsuccessful. The answer is actually quite simple to descern, and can be found on the very first page of this CAP report.

Paid for by the conservative corporate education reform outfit - the Eli Broad Foundation.

The National Education Policy Center has just released their analysis of this report, and they don't have kind things to say about this Broad funded report.

The report bases the majority of its findings and conclusions on conversations with charter school operators—including those that have not yet engaged in turnaround work—and with school district staff, researchers, and education reformers or consultants. Interview respondents included one professor of educational policy, one researcher from the Center on ReinventingPublic Education, five reformers or consultants from reform organizations or think tanks that advocate for market-based education policies, and three district administrators who were associated with their districts’ charter school partnerships.

Secondarily, the report cites evidence from the popular media, blogs, foundation reports, non-peer reviewed literature, charter operators’ external relations materials, and ideologically identifiable think tanks.

Beyond these citations, the report routinely offers a range of unsubstantiated claims that are not supported by any evidence or that ignore existing evidence to the contrary.

At the same time, no theoretical or substantive rationale behind the report’s sources of evidence is provided to justify why the particular interview respondents or literature sources were selected or how their data were evaluated. The result is a collection of weakly supported claims based on an unsystematic, unsophisticated interpretation of the knowledge base on school turnarounds, charter schools, and charter management organizations.

This is what millions of dollars can buy you. Research and recommendations that lack intellectual rigor. Designed to further corporate education reform agendas at the expense of public education, and the possibility of real reforms and changes that would make a difference to the quality of education students receive.

View REVIEW OF CHARTING NEW TERRITORY

The People Deliver

[flickr photo=5884954835]On a sunny June 29th day, 1 day ahead of the deadline, 6,200 people paraded down Broad St. to deliver 1,298,301 signatures to the Ohio Secretary of State's office. By far the largest signature collection effort in the history of Ohio, and over a million more than the 231,149 needed to qualify for the November ballot - guarantees voters are now certain to have a chance to vote NO on SB5 and repeal it.

The Secretary of state will now distribute the petition books to the respective 88 counties for verification, a process which must be completed by July 26th.

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The parade itself was marked with drums, pipes, chants and spontaneous singing. Colors across the rainbow, and people from all walks of life, young and old participated. Indeed, you don't collect over a million signatures with a broad community wide effort from tens of thousands of people.

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In related news, it was announced by the supporters of SB5, that Jason Mauk, the Senate Republican Spokesperson will be taking a leave of absence to become the voice of SB5 - cementing the fact that the only true support for SB5 comes from Republican officeholders looking for partisan payback, rather than sensible policy.

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Today, over a million Ohioans from across the political spectrum sent a powerful message to those partisans - a message that will be carried through to November and the repeal of SB5.

In the meantime, enjoy today.

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SB5 solves exactly zero problems, creates many more

Simple:

Ohio's teachers unions are fighting the proposal, arguing that by 2014, all schools will implement some type of new evaluation system through Race to the Top or the federal Teacher Incentive Fund grants.

"Everything they want to get out of an evaluation system that is linked to student performance will come out of the two federal programs," said Darold Johnson, an Ohio Federation of Teachers lobbyist. "If you are talking about pay, compensation and evaluations, that is all going to happen in the time frame. We don't need Senate Bill 5 for that. We don't need it in the budget."

If the system is developed locally, with teachers and administrators working together, it will be easier to implement, Johnson said.

It only gets hard once you have decided to go down a path that doesn't involve broad consultation, not listening to classroom teachers, and relies on eliminating collective bargaining in order to pursue corporate reform solutions that don't work.

SB5 and its companion provisions in the budget were never designed to solve education problems, they were designed to address a partisan political agenda - with public education, and classroom teachers, the victim of that fight.

Who profits with more testing?

If Ohio's new teacher merit pay framework survives intact in HB153, testing will become an even greater centerpiece of public education. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Schools, spent nearly $2 million to implement 52 tests, so that a new teacher evaluation system could be trialed. 52 tests! $2 million not spent on teaching.

At the center of this effort in North Carolina is the Eli Broad foundation.

Superintendent Peter Gorman may be the face of public education in Charlotte, but is a Los Angeles billionaire the power behind the scenes?

Locally and nationally, skeptics are questioning the clout wielded by Eli Broad. His foundation, which has helped put Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in the national spotlight, has also paid to train Gorman and the school board, and to help CMS hire administrators with a business bent.

This does all lead to an interesting question posed on the pages of the Washington Post today

In addition, who creates, scores, and maintains these tests? This promises to divert taxpayer dollars from the classroom to the testing companies. Handing public dollars over to private testing enterprises is outsourcing the intellectual work teachers train to do: evaluate students. It is a waste we cannot afford and promises further dumbing-down of our nation’s classrooms.

One might wonder if we are sending kids to school to learn or to simply take tests so we can "evaluate" teachers, and of course, hand over tax dollars to for-profit vampire testing companies.

Back to School for the Billionaires

The richest man in America stepped to the podium and declared war on the nation’s school systems. High schools had become “obsolete” and were “limiting—even ruining—the lives of millions of Americans every year.” The situation had become “almost shameful.” Bill Gates, prep-school grad and college dropout, had come before the National Governors Association seeking converts to his plan to do something about it—a plan he would back with $2 billion of his own cash.

[…]

“A lot of things we do don’t work out,” admitted Broad, a product of Detroit public schools and Michigan State who made a fortune in home building and financial services. “But we can take the criticism.”

The bottom line? The billionaires aspired to A-plus impact and came away with B-minus to C-minus results, according to the NEWSWEEK/CPI investigation, which was based on specially commissioned data and internal numbers shared by the philanthropists’ foundations.

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