Education and Business
Newsweek high school rankings: invalid money-makers
Published June 11, 2009 @ 02:43PM PT
Newsweek Magazine has once again compromised both credibility and ethics by releasing its annual high school rankings feature. The "rankings" are based on one single measure - one that is invalid as a gauge of quality and simply does not measure how "good" a high school is. They also violate journalistic ethics, as the gauge is one that directly promotes increased profits for an enterprise run by Newsweek's parent company.
The rankings are based entirely on the single criterion of how many AP (or two other similar) tests are taken by the students in the school. That's it. How the students perform on the tests is not part of the equation.
Newsweek's description: "Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by [reporter/editor] Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate (IB) and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2008 divided by the number of graduating seniors."
This is so clearly not a valid gauge of a school's quality that it's hardly worth wasting words explaining. The criterion is also subject to easy manipulation, needless to say.
Here's why this feature compromises Newsweek's ethics. Newsweek's parent company, the Washington Post, also owns Kaplan, the test prep powerhouse. It's also hardly necessary to explain that encouraging more students to take AP tests directly correlates with increasing Kaplan's business.
Standard journalistic ethics call for avoiding the appearance of conflict of interest. The Newsweek high school rankings emblazon the appearance of conflict of interest across the heavens.
An increasing chorus of dissenters complains each year about this feature - including some of the "winners." In May 2008, the superintendents of 38 high-performing school districts signed a letter to Newsweek protesting the feature and requesting that their districts be excluded (a toothless request, but a meaningful gesture). This year, a top education reporter in Dallas - the location of two of the top-ranked schools - questioned the rankings' credibility.
It's not just time-wasting but also harmful to pass authoritative-looking judgments on schools based on invalid criteria. Meanwhile, with the very survival of the news media under threat, journalistic credibility is one asset the media should struggle to keep. Newsweek is making a big mistake to compromise its ethics so shamelessly. The magazine needs to eliminate and renounce this corrupt and damaging feature.
A Commencement Speech of Terror and Beauty
Published June 07, 2009 @ 09:44AM PT
I hate to sound all gloom and doom, but as the speaker below says, "If you look at the science ... and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data." More and more, as I study ancient Near Eastern religions of Babylonia, and especially Israel and Roman Christianity - Near Eastern in mind if not in space - I find myself noticing that science has taken the mantle of prophecy from religion, and that its jeremiads seem to have as little effect on society as those of its pre-modern predecessors. Today's Cassandra wears a lab coat.
If there's any hope at all, it's in education. For the sake of the world, I can only hope Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and Eli Broad stop talking about education as a set of skills to dumbly read a "no insurance" contract at WalMart and to make change at its cash registers, and start talking about it in the more momentous terms the times demand.
But with businessmen leading our education policy, I can't say I'm too hopeful that will happen.
Call that a preface to the following. Thanks to Anand Thakker on Twitter for tweeting me this University of Portland commencement speech - "Healing or Stealing?" - by Paul Hawken, co-author of Natural Capitalism. It speaks of things we tend not to speak of to our young, when our only hope seems to be that they do hear these things, and make the changes in the near future that our own and previous generations were too weak to make.
Here's the beginning. Click through for the whole thing - and show it to the young.
Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. (Read the rest....)
photo of Malaysia by Shutterhack
Duncan's Thousand-Headed Hydra
Published June 05, 2009 @ 06:54PM PT
I really want to be sympathetic to and supportive of the Obama DoE under EdSec Arne Duncan. But for the life of me, every time I watch him speak or read him in interviews, I see contradictions that make me wonder if he's at all aware of how incoherent his vision is.
The latest example comes as Duncan explains why he rejects vouchers:
Vouchers usually serve 1 to 2 percent of the children in a community. And I think we as the federal government, we as local governments, or we as school districts, we have to be more ambitious than that. That’s an absolutely worthy or noble goal. If a nonprofit or philanthropy wants to provide scholarship money to children, that’s a great, great use of the resources.
But I don’t want to save 1 or 2 percent of children and let 98, 99 percent drown. We have to be much more ambitious than that. We have to expect more.
And this is why I would argue rather than taking one of these struggling schools, these thousands (inaudible) -- rather than taking three kids out of there and putting them in a better school and feeling good and sleeping well at night, I want to turn that school around now and do that for those 400, 500, 800, 1,200 kids in that school and give every child in that school and that community something better, and do it with a real sense of urgency.
Okay, so far, so good. Let's improve education for all students, not just 1 or 2 percent. But when he talks the "how" - closing 1,000 failing schools a year and re-opening them, often as charters, with new administration and faculty - things break down for me:
And let me tell you where I think charters can be very effective. First of all, you have to have a very high bar. This is not let a thousand flowers bloom. And some states, they'll just let anyone who wanted to open a charter open. You can't do that. This is a sacred work, and you've got to make sure that you're picking the best of the best to give them an opportunity to educate children.
Strike one: "the best of the best," we can surmise by Duncan's long history of touting KIPP and Green Dot and other "brands" - let's call them "chain schools" - perform so well on standardized tests (as if proficiency in reading and math are a full measure of what it means to be educated) because they usually don't enroll the lowest-performing students, and can expel those they do enroll for continuing to perform poorly. It's good to hear talk of high standards for charters, but that should include lowering the admissions bar to include the same students traditional public schools have to deal with.
Duncan continues:
Secondly, once you set that high bar, you have to do two things. You have to give these charters real autonomy. These are by definition education innovators. They're entrepreneurs. They have to be freed from the bureaucracy. And if you tie them too closely, they won't play.
Strike two? Maybe this isn't incoherent, but saying "set a high bar for only the best charters" implies control and a top-down definition of what a "quality charter" is. If this is true, then it undercuts the very freedom to innovate that Duncan urges.
Duncan goes on:
Second [sic], with that real autonomy, you have to have couple that with real accountability. You have to have five-year performance contracts. One without the other doesn't work. And so, if you just have autonomy without -- without accountability, you'll get mediocrity. If all you have is accountability and no autonomy, none of these education entrepreneurs would be interested. But that combination is very, very powerful.
Strike three - on several levels. First, if accountability continues to mean a math-and-reading standard of judgment, then autonomy is contrained by this emphasis. Second, closing 1,000 schools and replacing them with new operations that are given five years to succeed means, conversely, many of them will not succeed over that time. Study after study confirms that charters are often no better than the schools they replace.
The upshot: students at thousands of schools will go through five years of schooling - irreplaceable for them - that are in essence a gamble. How that's going to contribute to their salvation in this "sacred work" is something I just don't see.
The whole privatization scheme at the heart of Duncan's agenda is a Pandora's box that will be difficult, if not impossible, to remedy. If the turnaround strategy fails, there'll be a huge mess to clean up in its wake. This isn't "1,000 flowers," to be sure. If it fails, it's going to be more like a thousand-headed hydra. And how do you kill one of those?
Help Fight Big Telecomms for Net Neutrality
Published June 04, 2009 @ 08:44AM PT
I'm a big supporter of Free Press Action Fund, and their fight for net neutrality. I see it as an education issue - corporate hijacking of internet cables will affect school budgets.
So here's the latest appeal from FreePress. It only asks that you sign a petition to the FCC against big media lobbyists:
* * *
Dear Clay [All],
"I'm a guy who sees nothing good having come from the Internet. Period." Michael Lynton
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Typical.
The media exec to the right just launched an attack on the Web, saying that he sees "nothing good having come from the Internet. Period."
But Michael Lynton is just the latest in a line of old media bosses who see the open Internet as a threat — something they need to control in order to keep prices high, access limited and users in check.
Those of us who rely upon the Internet every day now have a chance to tell Michael otherwise:
Make Sure Lynton and His Cronies Don't Stifle the Internet
At this very minute, the Federal Communications Commission is crafting America's first national broadband plan. Whether the plan will give more control over our Internet to the likes of Sony Pictures, Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Verizon depends on what we do right now.
These companies' well-heeled lobbyists are flooding the FCC's public docket with comments in support of policies that let them:
- Tilt the Web’s level playing field to favor the Web sites of corporate partners;
- Deploy content-sniffing devices that would randomly open and sift through our private Web communications;
- Impose usage penalties on people who use the Web for more than simple e-mail and Web surfing;
- Block innovative Web services that compete against their phone, cable and entertainment products; and
- Disconnect users for any reason or without justification
Acting FCC chairman Michael Copps has called the creation of the broadband plan "the most formative — indeed, transformative — proceeding ever in the Commission’s history." He added: "The Commission must act to ensure that the genius of the open Internet is not lost."
Copps is right. Michael Lynton is wrong. We need to tell the FCC that a more open open and accessible Internet is a good thing that will revitalize our economy, engage millions more people in our democracy and give new meaning to freedom of speech. And we reject the nonsense that open Internet backers are all conspiring to promote piracy.
It’s time for the FCC to get behind a people-powered vision of 21st-century media media that’s participatory, open and democratic -- and not to hand the keys to the Internet to the old guard.
Tell the FCC: The Internet Is Good for Democracy. Period.
Click on the link above and tell the FCC that our national broadband plan must guarantee an open, fast, affordable and people-powered Internet without corporate gatekeepers.
Thank You,
Timothy Karr
Free Press Action Fund
www.freepress.net
P.S. Tell your friends to file comments with the FCC, too. Share the link on Facebook. Post a tweet. Forward this e-mail. Get the word out.
New Yorker Podcasts, Profiting from Poverty, and Casting Stones at Gays
Published June 03, 2009 @ 12:12AM PT
Some good links from around the web this week.
Dana Goldstein at The Nation: "Selling School Reform." -- How Obama, Duncan, and Democrats for Education Reform are giving education to the Wall Street types. (After all, there's good money to be made in the poverty trade.) Ohanion seems unnecessarily harsh on Goldstein in her prefatory comments.
Fiction podcasts from the New Yorker. Great short stories read by great authors. I can see a million classroom uses, beyond the pure pleasure.
Betty Bowers is without sin, so she casts stones freely: See her latest video explaining traditional marriage to everyone else. (Not educational, beyond the critical reading of an authoritative text and the fine example of satire - call her a female Stephen Colbert, maybe.)
Arne Duncan's Tall Chicago Tales: Education Policy Blog gives "A look at Chicago schools under Duncan." Coming soon to a blighted and soon-to-be-outsourced neighborhood near you. (More de-mythologizing Duncan's turnaround "successes" here.)
CBS radio coverage of Tiananmen Square is one of hundreds of rich a/v resources at Crooks and Liars growing "Newstalgia" archives. History, politics, media studies teachers will love it.
War-gaming North Korea: Wired's link-rich feature on the possible consequences of a U.S. war with North Korea. (I arrived in Seoul the very week that Pyongyang detonated its first nuke three summers ago. I'm leaving now as it's getting even more batsh!t - and not without reason, frankly, though you won't hear that on CNN. Provoking renewed conflict could bloody this place up bad. It's an ugly situation - and the readings would be great for current events teachers.)
It's moving week, folks. Packing up the stuff for shipment to Singapore, preparing for a month of couch-surfing until we fly out - unless the commies invade first.
Let's Standardize This Marshmallow Test for Kindergarteners
Published May 30, 2009 @ 01:06PM PT
Marshmallows are sort of bubbly, so don't let your bias for bubble-tests dissuade you, College Board: there may be a way to mark up the marshmallows and make a pretty penny off this. We can use it to look 2nd-graders in the eye and tell them they're not on track for college.
(Seriously, this 5-minute video is worth a watch for both its psychological suggestions and its comedy. Kids do the darnedest things.)
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Budget Smarts: Free eBooks to Replace or Supplement Textbooks
Published May 28, 2009 @ 12:05PM PT
Shrinking education budgets make this resource of "free eBooks that can supplement or replace classroom texts" worth a share. I just discovered it via eSchool News. Here's their write-up:
"E-Books Directory" is an online resource that contains links to freely downloadable eBooks, technical papers, and documents, as well as user-contributed content, articles, reviews, and comments. Launched in 2008 as a free service to students, educators, researchers, and eBook lovers, the directory is a database-driven web site that uses PHP scripting language and the MySQL relational database. As of press time, it listed 1702 eBooks in 391 categories, including children¹s books, history, humanities, literature, science, and mathematics. Under Classic Literature, for example, users will finds links to such iconic texts as Anna Karenina, Beowulf, Don Quixote, Great Expectations, Little Women, and more. The site says it does not support copyright infringement, nor will it link to web sites that trade copyrighted material. http://www.e-booksdirectory.com
I checked out some of the subject areas in the directory, and was pleasantly surprised to find that many of the books are less than a decade old, and often from some of the most reputable university presses, when I expected to find only very old, public domain works.
A few keepers from a 30-minute skim:
University of Houston's Digital History U.S. History Textbook looks great for high school classrooms. No need to pay Houghton-Mifflin or MacMillan $100 per textbook when this one's available for free. Spend those dollars elsewhere.
A Century of War is a collection of polemical essays that could extend any discussions of the wars of the 20th Century.
Indians Before Colombus, though dated (1955), is a University of Chicago Press text. Per the authors, "We have tried to tell the story of the Indians by piecing together the bits of available information. The data we have presented are accurate, and we have tried to set forth the facts as interestingly as possible."
For writing teachers, the tasty-looking Less Than Words Can Say. The blurb:
Mitchell takes examples of bad writing and rips them to shreds. While some would think these mistakes don't really matter, Mitchell insists that they do, because they are revelations about the mind that wrote them. Thus examples of bad writing that come from "educators" are given special attention; if educators have twisted minds, what can we expect to have happen to their charges?
Oh, snap.
Here's a fun bit from Mitchell's work that every student (and academic) should read:
Whatever else Churchill may have been doing in those days [when Hitler was preparing to attack Britain], he was always providing the English with words. With words he formed their thoughts and emotions. "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills,'' said Churchill. Millions answered, apparently, "By God, so we shall.''
Imagine, however, that Churchill had been an ordinary bureaucrat and had chosen to say instead:
"Consolidated defensive positions and essential preplanned withdrawal facilities are to be provided in order to facilitate maximum potentialization for the repulsion and/or delay of incursive combatants in each of several preidentified categories of location deemed suitable to the emplacement and/or debarkation of hostile military contingents.''
Check out the full list of titles here. I've only scratched the surface, or, put differently: "A full accounting of the plenitude of literary and non-literary selections available to education professionals and consumers alike at this website are beyond the scope of this weblog entry. Those interested in learning more about this phenomenon are advised to access the comprehensive listing here."
