Oh No, Say It Ain't So: Andy to Ed Dept?

"And You Thought Duncan was a Dangerous Choice? asks Susan Ohanian?

Susan reports:

Rumor is rife in Washington, D. C. that three people likely to get top positions in the Department of Education are:

* Andrew Rotherham of Education Sector, a major supporter of NCLB's test-and-punish
approach and of high-stakes testing.

* Russlyn Ali of Education Trust West, to head the Office of Civil Rights in the Education Department; Education Trust is a major supporter of NCLB and believes in high stakes testing of individuals, even though minority youth are disproportionately denied diplomas based on these tests.

* Wendy Kopp, Teach for America, who needs no introduction.

If you aren't worried already, enter these names on a search.

Susan suggests you run, not walk to your phone and call your favorite politician to complain.
I actually see a benefit in having Rotherham/Eduwonk in the Ed Department just to get him off the regular blogging beat. And he spent so much energy chasing rumors to find out Eduwonkette's identity, only to find he was out outfoxed by a grad student. Expect the same level of competence at the ed department. Well, he's not always wrong. He did call me crazy. I responded When Eduwonks Attack and its' worth a read just to see where this guy (and yes, he's one of those ed reform Dems) is coming from.

One Big Happy Family - The Roots of Rotherham

One Big Happy Edu-Family at Chancellor's New Clothes.
where the Ed Sector gang is compared to, well, a gang of the Godfather type – Eli Broad as Don Broadeleone. The speculation in the comment section that Bloomberg is Fredo has it all wrong. My vote goes to Kevin Carey.

This was an excellent follow-up piece, with more hopefully to come, on Eduwonkette's groundbreaking post on interlocking directorates on Feb. 14 where she published her web of intrigue and caused just s slight reaction among the Rotherham Ed Sector crowd.

Rotherham Poses Teacher Quality vs, Class Size - Again

Andy is at it again over at Eduwonk.

Small classes are not a silver bullet and research pretty clearly indicates that it's a much weaker -- and more expensive -- strategy than some others, like improving teacher effectiveness. That's especially true where there are a dearth of qualified applicants for teaching jobs so reducing class size merely exacerbates quality problems. The research and evidence base here is pretty clear and it is what it is, so contra what a lot of the advocates it's not something that you get to agree or disagree with any more than you can agree or disagree with gravity. The bottom line is that teacher quality matters more.

I followed Andy's advice (when he called me crazy) and checked and rechecked that teacher survey looking for a question that would ask teachers how they viewed the teacher quality vs. class size reduction. Maybe I missed - it didn't seem to be asked. One would think, given the nature of this post, that question would be fundamental. But he is not really interested in what teachers think about this issue because the answer is obvious. That teacher quality across the board (except maybe the 5% edge) would improve across the board.

And it would be nice to see links to the research that "proves" teacher quality matters more than class size reduction.

It is also interesting that the cost argument is used when it comes to class size reduction, the real reason teacher quality is the hot new thing in rejecting calls for a serious investment in education equal to say, Bear Sterns bailouts or wars.

A recent presentation at Columbia U about the Tennessee study on class size impact also took some aspects of teacher quality into account and came up with the opposite conclusion.

The "research" on teacher quality - based on what factors, by the way - as is the teacher survey – it's about a political agenda, not education reform. How disappointing to the Education Sector that the onslaught going on against teachers due to the "reforms" being pushed by them has resulted in teachers feeling a greater need for a union.

We'll expound more on how the survey was designed to seek out making inroads into the teaching corps to push this agenda.

When Eduwonks Attack

Andrew Rotherham and others exercised about some of Eduwonkette's surgical strikes at the heart of their pro-everything BloomKlein all the time, have thrown barbs at her for remaining anonymous, acting like there's no connections between the long reach of their Bloomie hero vindictiveness and someone who might one day look for a job. The fact that she asked me to check out the Rotherham/Russo/Medina/Colvin session at AERA (is Andy miffed that she may not have graced him with her presence) somehow taints her with my supposed lunacy.

Note that I am joined in my anti-everything NYC lunacy by such esteemed colleagues as NYC Educator, Leonie Haimson, Diane Ravitch and a whole core of NYC teacher bloggers who are beyond outrage at the phony ed reform movement. And probably 90% of the NYC teaching corps.


Here is Rotherham's silly post this on the Eduwonk blog.
The Wire
Not to rehash this entire debate but if Eduwonkette and Education Week want us to believe she's just some dispassionate observer of the education scene, especially the scene in New York City, so anonymous journalism is OK in this case, then it might not be such a good idea for her to use anti-everything NYC ed activist Norm Scott as her stringer...kinda, you know, blows her cover...but I did like her coverage!

Eduwonkette responded with this:
Marry Me, Eduwonk!: Boys, watch and learn from a Clinton-certified Don Juan - the passive aggressive flirting, truculent pet names, salacious locker room gossip, and wonky bickering all make me hot. Sure, you're already married - but after #9, polygamy is the new prostitution in New York.


I left this comment on his blog:
You don't read enough. I'm not only anti-everything NYC, but anti-everything Chicago and anywhere else that the phony reform movement to turn schools into factories is in operation. When it is clear that the PR expression "Children First" is really "Children Last" then you look at what's really going on behind the PR and oppose the entire program of BloomKlein.

I'm proud to be part of the NYC community where a host of respected teacher bloggers are on the same page as I am, in addition to influential parents on the NYC public school parents blog who have been persistent critics of the Bloomberg/Klein administration. Someone should point to a similar outpouring of support from parents and teachers in NYC for the mayor.

But then again, why listen to teachers and parents? You mentioned in your session at AERA that your survey shows teachers don't know much about educational policy. You know – NYC teachers are just a little busy marking those 150-170 papers a day from overcrowded classes and those 10 hour days the heroic "quality" teachers are expected to put in to save the world to have much time for these little debates.

As for Eduwonkette, whatever research she comes up with to support what we feel in our gut, is welcome. Why not take the research she puts out there and pick that apart instead of the irrelevant issue as to whether she is anonymous or not? No one seems to care except you and other pro-everything NYC people who get their words thrown right back in their faces and want to flush her out for purposes that seem awful suspicious.

Two Awful Opeds in NY Times

David Bellel places Andrew Rotherham/Eduwonk in his true role as a high-priced hooker for the phony Ed reform establishment. Anyone surprised that he loves the UFT leadership (see Vera Pavone's piece on this aspect posted March 18 here)?
Hmmm. Anyone got a good pimp picture?

Anyway, here is Leonie Haimson's take on the Op Eds in the NY Times from last Sunday (March 9.)

Highlights:

"Nice to have such so-called “balanced” opinions in our newspaper of record. Shows how strong the rightward drift has been." "Between this and the Sunday Roundtable discussion of how helpful it is when billionaires “disrupt” our schools, the NY times appears to have lost any pretense of a balanced perspective – or any anchor to reality."

The first is called “Educators or Kingmakers? “ by David White, a “adjunct scholar” at the Lexington Institute, a libertarian think tank. (Apparently, White’s main job is working for “Keybridge Communications, a boutique public relations service that works with free-market think tanks around the world.” see http://www.americasfuture.org/aff-team.php )

Here’s an excerpt: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/opinion/10white.html?th&emc=th

“Forty percent of teachers leave the classroom within their first five years on the job — in some measure because they don’t stand to gain the same performance-based pay raises available to their private-sector counterparts. Merit pay would help public schools retain good teachers by paying them more. But the unions have fought against such measures.

There is no research to show that merit pay helps reduce teacher attrition– in fact the evidence from states like North Carolina and Florida suggests the reverse, as merit pay tends to penalize and stigmatize teachers who work in low-performing schools w/ high needs students.

And : “The same can be said about school choice. Despite compelling evidence that it improves student achievement, the national teachers’ unions regularly stand against the policy. “

Again, there is no such evidence that “choice” meaning vouchers, improves student achievement. Even some of the most conservative theorists on education – eg. Sol Stern – have moved away from that position.

The other oped is called “Teaching Change” by the well-known polemicist, Andrew Rotherham, Eduwonk himself.

While he purportedly praises the UFT and some other unions for adopting merit pay and establishing their own charter schools, he proposes creating “a portfolio of contracts to match a portfolio of schools” that would supposedly “give parents better options and re-energize teachers’ unions as an agent of progress.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/opinion/10rotherham.html?ref=opinion

Nice to have such so-called “balanced” opinions in our newspaper of record. Shows how strong the rightward drift has been. Rather unsettling that now the mainstream explanation for the purported low-performance of our urban schools has become the teachers union.

The existence of such unions somehow don’t seem to hamper suburban schools from high achievement levels, but is somehow the root of all our problems in low-performing urban schools – not their high-needs populations, not their huge class sizes and overcrowded conditions, not the immense student loads that most teachers are saddled with, not the lack of commitment on the part of our elected leaders to replicate the conditions under which suburban schools thrive, but supposedly the lack of “choice” and the low skills of our urban teachers.

Between this and the Sunday Roundtable discussion of how helpful it is when billionaires “disrupt” our schools, the NY times appears to have lost any pretense of a balanced perspective – or any anchor to reality.

Leonie Haimson
Class Size Matters