The Education Sector: What Crooks

The Education Sector has long been part of the ed deform crowd, with blogger Eduwonk, Andrew Rotherham leading the way for years. That he was a former Clinton admin ed official should give us a clue as to why we are not totally surprised at Obama joining the crowd. The Democratic Party is no friend of true ed reform.

So, they issue a supposedly unbiased report on charter schools and managed to leave out the critical findings. "What crooks!" was one comment we received by email.

(Here are a few previous Ed Notes posts on this gang:
teacher quality at the education sector... a stacked deck
the education sector's biased survey

audio of ed sector teacher quality event

check out the ednotes analysis of the biased education sector teacher survey which didn't ask about the impact of class size because the ed sector is totally on board with the usual suspects on this issue. ...)

We do have a wonderful nationwide network sniffing out these news nuggets.

Caroline Grannan sent this clue and I forwarded it to Leonie Haimson, who put this report together on the NYC Education News Listserve. Monte Neil from Fair Test sent out an original post and Alexander Russo blogged about it from his sources.

Here is Leonie's post. (By the way, it was great to see Leonie's husband Michael Oppenheimer's excellent stint on the News Hour the other day discussing: Bound for Copenhagen, Obama Faces Climate Change Obstacles.)

Tom Toch’s report on Charter Management Organizations was scrubbed by Education Sector – with many of the negatives taken out. Education Sector is a think tank heavily supported by pro-charter foundations like Gates and Broad. (see below discussion from Alex Russo’s This week in education.)

The report cites the following funders: Smith Richardson Foundation….. Education Sector has received grants from foundations that have funded charter schools, charter school networks, and other organizations mentioned in this report, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Specific disclosures of funder and board relationships associated with this report can be found in the endnotes.

Toch’s original findings as published in Education Week and elsewhere were remarkably balanced; see this excerpt:

In the decade since they emerged on the education landscape, nonprofit networks of charter schools called charter-management organizations, or CMOs, have built some of the biggest brands in education—the Knowledge Is Power Program, Aspire, Green Dot Public Schools, Uncommon Schools—and won plaudits from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, The New York Times Magazine, and “60 Minutes.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is now poised to give them a central role in the federal government’s multibillion-dollar school reform campaign. He has named leaders of the CMO movement to key posts in his department and has pledged to make “big bets” on the highest-performing charter networks with the expectation that they’ll produce large numbers of outstanding new schools for disadvantaged students.

But the research for a report on CMOs that I’ve produced for the think tank Education Sector reveals that many of these organizations are going to be hard-pressed to deliver the many schools that Duncan wants from them. Discussions with dozens of CMO executives and other experts, an examination of CMO business plans, consultant reports, and other documents, and visits to over a dozen schools run by prominent CMOs in different parts of the country make clear that a host of challenges—the need to find and finance school buildings, the expense of educating impoverished students successfully, the difficulty of recruiting high-performing teachers and principals, and, in many instances, strong opposition from traditional public educators—has left many CMOs working hard to sustain themselves academically and financially.

The report even now is interesting about finances of NYC charter schools, and makes clear that the funding it receives from Bloomberg is quite generous. See this:

http://www.educationsector.org/usr_doc/Growing_Pains.pdf

Since pledging in 2003 to make New York “the most charter-friendly city,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have provided leading CMOs like Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, and KIPP (as well as many individual charter schools) heavily subsidized space in under-enrolled city schools; subsidized custodial, maintenance, and security services; and independence over staffing, budgets, and instruction.37 Civic Builders, a nonprofit real estate developer established in 2002, bundles money from the city’s school system, philanthropies, commercial lenders, and various state and federal construction programs to buy real estate and rent it to charter schools at below-market rates. The organization has spent $227 million developing nine schools, including the retrofitting of a Brooklyn ice cream factory to house an Achievement First elementary and middle school.38

With the annual funding that they get in New York City (some $12,440 per student, plus additional local and federal monies, a sum that Achievement First estimates to be between 80 percent and 95 percent of the funding that the city’s traditional schools receive), Achievement First’s New York schools are able to operate without philanthropic subsidies once they are fully enrolled, says chief financial officer Max Polaner—in sharp contrast to Amistad in New Haven. Says CEO Toll: “We expanded into New York because of Klein and because the dollars are doable.” But such partnerships have been rare, because [most other] school districts are wary of losing students and revenue to CMOs, and charter networks have wanted to preserve their independence. And while New York City is relatively charter-friendly, the state as a whole has been less so, imposing strict caps on the number of charter schools that have only recently been increased after years of bitter political struggle.

See also this, about the high attrition levels at some charter schools, pointed out by Caroline Grannan:

Another challenge is high student attrition. Rigorous standards, struggling students, grueling schedules along with transient families and the other attendant problems of poverty often lead to significant numbers of students leaving leading CMO schools. The cumulative effect can be substantial. For instance, a 2008 study by SRI International, an independent research organization, found that an average of 60 percent of the entering fifth-graders at four Bay Area KIPP middle schools left before graduating at the end of the eighth grade, and that the students who left tended to be lower achievers (by law, charter schools must be open to all students and use a lottery if over-subscribed).44

One wonders how much more negative the report was originally before being scrubbed.

From: Monty Neill, Fair Test

Yesterday I scanned just the exec sum of this report from Ed Sector. It was clear that the recommendations were merely Ed Sector's pro-privatization agenda, said nothing about what presumably were findings of various kinds of problems with charters. Now it seems Ed Sector changed the original report by its co-founder Tom Toch, removing lots of content and tacking on its ideology as 'recommendations'.

Here are excerpts from Alexander Russo:

November 24, 2009 | Posted At: 05:59 PM | Author: Alexander Russo | Category: Think Tank Mafia

EdSector CMO Report: Who Lost Tom Toch?

Thanks to a couple of eagle-eyed readers (including MDM) for pointing out that the much-delayed Education Sector report on charter management organizations lacks the name -- and apparently much of the content provided by -- its original author, writer and EdSector co-founder Tom Toch.

...

Toch can't publish the original version of the report because of copyright issues but he points to several other pieces (in Education Week and the Kappan)

Read Russo's full post at:

http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2009/11/cmos-who-lost-tom-toch.html

Audio of Ed Sector Teacher Quality Event

I spoke to someone today who insisted that teacher quality is a separate entity from conditions. I argued that TQ is very variable and dependent on things like class size, the type of students, the general conditions in the school. Even time of day - like most any teacher will agree that under equal conditions, they are more effective in the AM than in the PM. It makes sense since everyone is more tired. This is not to say that if you get your best class at the end of the day you won't be energized.

Almost every teacher I talk to signs on to the quality teacher debate as if it's a digital concept: 0 if not a quality teacher, 1 if you are a quality teacher. I look at TQ as analog - it fluctuates on let's say a scale of 1-10. Now there may be some teachers who are in a range of say 5-7 generally and others might be a 3-5.
What we would hope for is some consistency. Would you want a 10 20% of the time who can float down to a 3 when he is depressed? (It does happen). Or a consistent 7?

Of course the big bugaboo in all this: what determines the quality of a teacher? The ed reformers have only one response: results on high stakes tests with the added bonus of value-added which tracks the growth of a child over time and attempts to find what part in that growth an individual teacher had.

They might as well rate teachers on the real growth of the child - how many inches taller they get the year you have them. "My class grew an aggregate total of 5 feet." BONUS!

Can't you just see schools slipping human growth hormone into the milk and cookies?

But let's go back to the TQ debate as if these factors didn't exist and we really had an effective ratign system that went beyond the test. The 5% that many people agree that are at the low end of TQ - say 1 or 2 all the time are the main focus of the so-called reform movement that includes assaults on seniority and the union contract. Call it the "put a Quality Teacher in every classroom" concept.

Like a chicken in every pot. (But it is a quality chicken?)

All this reform aimed at 5%. Like they are the ones responsible for an entire nation falling behind in the global economy. Give me a break. If principals could remove whoever they wanted tomorrow, these people would be replaced with a similar percentage of low quality teachers.

Start off with the idea that first year teachers are lower quality than they will be in their 2nd year and 2nd year teachers are lower quality than in their 3rd -- oops! (Half the TFA people are gone before they get to the 3rd year.) Also assume a % of new teachers no matter how hard they are trying are just not all that competent in their first year. Given the numbers that don't finish the year, I bet it is higher than 5%.

Thus, my theory that 5% of the entire teaching corps will fall into the lower end no matter what is done. As would a similar percentage of cops, doctors, lawyers, plumbers - you name it. I find it interesting that there's a witch hunt for teachers but not for bad doctors who have better than tenure - the AMA.

Check out the ednotes analysis of the biased Education Sector teacher survey which didn't ask about the impact of class size because the Ed Sector is totally on board with the usual suspects on this issue. Read the Ed Notes post exposing some of the biased questions here.

David B has broken the Ed Sector audio of the presentation of the survey on May 7 into 3 parts so you can listen to them in segments – if you can stand it. There were some teachers present, including one from a NYC middle school and the president of the Providence TU.

Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3

The Education Sector's Biased Survey

Check that apple for worms

Last week the Education Sector held a pat themselves on the back event ( Teacher Voice: How Teachers See the Teacher Quality Debate) in Washington where they supposedly heard the voice of the classroom teacher as they released the results of their survey of a thousand teachers.

Our posting on the event led to Andrew Rotherham calling us a crazy and challenging us to read the report and listen to the event. The EdNotes gnomes have been busy poring over the audio and the report itself and we'll be posting some analysis over a period of time. Here is some preliminary stuff.

A few days before the event, the Justice Not Tests group here in NYC that has been organizing to get schools to reject merit pay held a conference call with one of the three teachers appearing at the event to review some of the ideas the Ed Sector is pushing. We didn't expect the actual voices of the teachers to get much play at the event and from what we hear they didn't. (I still haven't listened but I'm stocking up on liquor to get me through the 2 hours.)

Our view of the entire exercise is that it is insidious - designed to use the natural range of opinions of teachers to make the case that teachers ultimately want the kinds of reforms being pushed by the Ed Sector and to win over those that don't – designed to show that many teachers really want market-based concepts but their voices are being stifled by their unions.

Note the title of title of the report: Waiting to be Won Over.

Won over to what? Why the Ed Sector point of view of course.

Teacher quality is important, class size - nil
In Ed Sectorville, teacher quality matters more than lower class size. Of course they never asked the obvious question as to where teachers stand on this issue. I posted a follow-up piece on this issue here.

The focus on removing teachers is practically pathological. Here is a result based on one of the tenets of the Ed Sector type reforms:

Still, according to these survey results, most unions do not appear to be engaged in efforts to deal with ineffective teachers. Only 17 percent of teachers say that the union in their district “leads efforts to identify ineffective teachers and retrain them.”

Somehow, "good" unions - like their buddies in the UFT - are associated with taking part in removing teachers rather than defending them.

As a whole, teachers today are what political analysts might describe as “in play”and waiting to be won over by one side or another. Despite frustrations with schools, school districts, their unions, and a number of aspects of the job in general, teachers are not sold on any one reform agenda. They want change but are a skeptical audience. For instance, nearly half of teachers surveyed say that they personally know a teacher who is ineffective and should not be in the classroom. But, although teachers want something done about low-performing colleagues, they are leery of proposals to substantially change how teachers can be dismissed. [my bold]

So nearly half the teachers know of a teacher who should not be in the classroom. I've met as many bad principals as bad teachers. Did they ask how many know of a principal who should not be running a school? Who helpless teachers have to endure? Who have some political angels protecting them? Who cultivate bad teachers as spies? Next time try asking what teachers think about having them elect their principals. (It's done in many places in Europe.)

One of the things we discussed during our conference call was the idea of removing bad teachers. I asked all the participants in the call what percentage of people they have worked with they consider bad teachers. We all agreed on a rough number - about 5%. This included tenured and untenured. We agreed that many are still there because administrators either find them useful or just don't have the will to remove them. 5% - and this is a consistent figure I get from most teachers – becomes the end-all and be-all of the entire Ed Sector reform movement. I claim that no matter what you do there will be 5% "bad"- in all professions (maybe more in the Ed pundit field). Where are the calls to remove bad doctors, who can actually kill people, another question that should have been asked as a control? I bet more than 50% will say they know of at least one bad doctor. And lawyers? And education pundits who did not teach?

The amount of focus on removing bad teachers as the solution to the problems in education is dangerous. Look at the south in right to work states where the lack of a union and no tenure would seem to make it easy to remove anyone. Education is no better and in fact worse.

Three in four public school teachers (76 percent) agree that, “Too many veteran teachers who are burned out stay because they do not want to walk away from the benefits and service time they have accrued.” And this view resonates with majorities of teachers whether they are newcomers to the profession (80 percent) or veterans (68 percent).

What does "too many" mean? Of course the follow-up can become – let's cut these benefits to "improve" education? But there was no joy in Ed Sectorville on this point:

Educators and policymakers frequently discuss ways to attract and retain high-quality teachers. One idea getting attention these days is to swap some of the benefits teachers enjoy later in their careers for more money in the early years. The survey finds teachers are protective of their pensions, and the vast majority of teachers overall do not like the idea of raising starting salaries in exchange for fewer retirement benefits.

Class size not a factor in Ed Sectorville
On attracting and retaining teachers, there are seven options. There is no hint of attracting and retaining people with low class sizes, which many of my private school teacher friends point to as a reason never to teach in a public school. Many teachers who leave cite class size as the single most important factor. Hey! Why bring up a topic that is off bounds in your world of ed reform?

The only mention of class size:
Fifty-five percent of teachers overall say the union in their district “negotiates to keep class size down in the district.”

On how unions can improve teaching? Again, lowering class size was not an option.

There was even less joy in Ed Sectorville at this result:

Most teachers see the teachers union as vital to their profession. When asked how they think of teachers unions or associations, 54 percent of teachers responded that they are “absolutely essential.” This is an increase of 8 percentage points from 46 percent in 2003.
...most teachers do not think that union presence hinders the reputation of the profession. Just 21 percent of teachers agree that, “Teachers would have more prestige if collective bargaining and lifetime tenure were eliminated.”

We see this movement towards unions as a result of the imposition of they very market-based concepts the Ed Sector is pushing. I bet the figures on NYC would be considerably higher on the essential need for a union except for the fact that many teachers feel the UFT lines up way too often on the Ed Sector side of the fence.

I can't wait for the 2011 biased survey. A sign I need to get a life.

The questions, results and audio can be downloaded from the Education Sector. Or email me and I'll send you the pdfs.

Teacher Quality at the Education Sector... a stacked deck?

UPDATE:
WARNING: Read at your own peril.

The following post has been declared as gibberish and unhinged at Rotherham's Eduwonk world of ed reform fantasyland and this blogger has received an official Eduwonk "crazy" designation, not the first time we have been so designated. Just ask former principal(s), District Superintendent(s), UFT District rep(s), etc.

While over there, make sure to read Edwonk's "unfair and unbalanced report" on the ATR situation in NYC. Then you make the call as to whether you have accidentally fallen into a science fiction blog.


This morning at 9 AM in Washington DC, the Education Sector will listen to the voice of teachers – at a time no working teacher can attend.

Teacher Voice: How Teachers See the Teacher Quality Debate
May 7, 2008 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM (Capital Hilton)

The announcement says:
As policymakers, teachers unions, and other stakeholders react to changing demands on the nation's public education system, there is considerable debate about what teachers think and what they want. Too often assumptions define this conversation rather than actual evidence of what teachers want and how teachers see their profession evolving.

A new survey from Education Sector by Ann Duffett, Steve Farkas, Andrew J. Rotherham, and Elena Silva examines teachers' opinions and attitudes toward teacher unions, teacher unionism, and a range of current district reforms, including those aimed specifically at improving teacher quality. Join Education Sector for a presentation and discussion of the survey's findings

Ed Notes has taken the position that this emphasis on teacher quality has nefarious purposes. There will always be a bell-curve of teacher quality, just as there is a curve for doctors, lawyers, plumbers, etc. Funny, but I don't see the Ed Sector running events trying to discern the quality of the physicians poor kids with asthma attacks might see in the emergency room in the middle of the night and then come into school too sleepy to pay attention and how that factor affects teacher quality.

I'm anxious to see where the surveyed teachers come from. I wonder how many are from places where the ed reform "the fault is on the lack of teacher quality" movement has hit, often in urban schools under some form of mayoral control.

Now there are actually a few teachers on the panel. One is from Denver. And the president of the Providence Teachers Union is also on the panel. In March, he led a protest and called for a vote on no-confidence in the current administration of the Providence schools. The last time they did that was against Diana Lam, who was hired by Joel Klein for a disastrous run as chief of instruction. (If a union protests against someone, that person must be good for him.)

And a NYC teacher too. I have faith than anyone who has taught in the NYC world of BloomKlein, so beloved by the Ed Sector, will have plenty of good stuff to say – if allowed to say much.

I would have loved to see people like NYC educator or Reality Based Educator or Chaz School Daze but they wouldn't take a day off for this stuff. Not like.....

......It is particularly gratifying to see controversial Wash. DC Superintendent Michelle Rhee, a Teach for America alum and former Joel Kleinite in NYC, will be able to take time away from running a large urban school system to attend. A few weeks ago, Rhee also found the time to come up to New York to attend a weekday Manhattan Institute breakfast to push the usual ed reform line. What would they say if scads of teachers took time off to attend some of these things? Bad, bad, go to the rubber room. But Rhee's attendance at these events is indicative of the real ed reform agenda - ideology and politics, not education.

I don' t even have to go. Let's see, bet they say a hundred times: research shows that teacher quality is the single most important factor in a child's education (I was disappointed to see Chaz School Daze say the same thing on his blog.) I don't agree.

We could just as easily proclaim that research shows that small class sizes are the single most important factor in a child's education. That seems to be what I heard at a recent symposium at Columbia about the famous Tennessee study, where all classes, with the good, the bad and the ugly teachers saw improvements when class size was lowered. But fuggedaboudit. Ed Sector, unabashed admirers of BloomKlein would rather talk about teacher quality in isolation of other factors like class size or the difficulty of some children to learn – watch out for the dreaded "we aren't talking about comparing apples and oranges - followed by claims of the unproven and as far as I'm concerned unfounded – value added approach where teachers are rated based on the growth of kids based on past performance (on highs takes tests only, not on things like "Johnny entered my class s serial killer and left a lamb.")

Good Norm Twin: But let's be fair here. You didn't even hear the results of the survey. Maybe it will bear you out on class size.

Evil Norm Twin: Will the teachers surveyed say colleagues they view as incompetent should be made to drink arsenic? And teacher unions are horrible because they protect these people? Anyone check in NYC lately to see how well the UFT has been protecting teachers?

The cast of characters
Featured Presenters:
Andrew J. Rotherham, Elena Silva

This event will feature:
Greg Ahrnsbrak, Teacher, Denver Public Schools
Ann Duffett, FDR Group
Steven Farkas, FDR Group
Ellen Halloran, Teacher, New York City Public Schools
Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools
Steven Smith, President, Providence Teachers Union
Elena Silva, Senior Policy Analyst, Education Sector (as moderator)
Andrew J. Rotherham, Co-director, Education Sector (introductory remarks)

Greg Ahrnsbrak is on the panel because he led a battle to modify the union contract in his school, a trend in Denver. Rotherham loves teachers who are willing to throw out contract rules. He throws out the line we hear form the likes of Kahlenberg [on Shanker] and Leo Casey about the New Unionism (how has that worked out for NYC teachers?]

"If (unions) see this as an opportunity to redefine their roles, they will thrive," Rotherham said. "If they don't get in the game, it will pass them by."

The UFT has always been in the game, so how come NYC teachers feel oh, so passed by?

To get a sense of why Greg Ahrnsbrak is on the panel, check out this excerpt from

The Denver Post reported back in January (edited):

A bid for autonomy at Denver's Bruce Ran dolph school faces another test today, when union leaders meet for the second time to vote on whether to accept a waiver from the teachers contract.

The union, so far, has balked at the request — The school board approved its part of the waiver last month, and a majority of teachers at the school voted for the proposal. Last week, Manual High School in Denver made a similar request.

State Senate President Peter Groff may introduce a bill to encourage other schools to do the same, and more than $100,000 from nonprofit organizations has been offered to Bruce Randolph if the move goes forward.

National education experts are watching the Bruce Randolph proposal that would give the school control over its budget, teacher time, calendar, incentives and hiring decisions.

"It is going to be fascinating," said Andrew Rotherham of Virginia, co-founder and co-director of Education Sector, a national education policy think tank. "This is what progress looks like, messy and contentious."

The union wanted Bruce Randolph to clearly explain what parts of the contract should be waived. Last week, teachers submitted a five-page response, outlining each article and subsection they want waived or retained.

Union President Kim Ursetta said she discussed the proposal with representatives from the school Saturday.

"We want to be able to look at what contract provisions, if any, impede student achievement at Bruce Randolph," Ursetta said.

The union should be flexible, said Rotherham.

"If (unions) see this as an opportunity to redefine their roles, they will thrive," Rotherham said. "If they don't get in the game, it will pass them by."

"We took the worst middle school in the state and brought it to a low ranking," said Greg Ahrnsbrak, a teacher at Bruce Randolph and the school's union representative, who helped craft the waiver plan.

Now Greg Ahrnsbrak is at a school that had lots of problems and the staff has bought into the idea the way to fix these problems is to show a willingness to waive the contract, obviously pegged as the main culprit. The central union has been balking and teachers at Ahrnsbak's school are talking going charter.

Ahrnsbrak said some have encouraged the staff to go ahead and implement the proposal anyway, regardless of the union's stance.

Private foundations love the controversy and are leaping in. The Denver Post reported on Jan. 24:

....the Piton Foundation, ... offered the school $100,000 if the autonomy bid were approved...

"If somebody there says they'd like to do a charter," [said a Piton rep] "we'll give them the $100,000 and I'll go back and try and raise more money."

Ahhh. Bribery from the world of foundations. Check back with the teachers in a few years and see where the money has gone once the union is broken.

Looks like Ellen Halloran, our poor lone NYC teacher, will be seriously outnumbered.