Meet the New Boss

So now, on to "data," which really means test scores, 

which is bullshit.

Update Update: I should explain that I'm still writing about new LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho because when he was in Miami-Dade he made a ton of decisions ostensibly based on "data" and he's likely to carry on the same way in Los Angeles. The problem is, data is bullshit, but education bosses are not clever enough to understand that or principled enough to do anything about it. It's a failure of imagination and a lack of courage. I wish I was wrong.

Update: When I first started this post about five ten days ago, I had a hard time finding anything on this guy. I mean I was looking through old videos of his speeches. Algorithms! Now there's stuff everywhere and you can look it up for yourself if you want. I recommend the speeches rather than the canned talking points that seem to dominate the more recent reporting.

For me, it has been an education and it has left me with a queasy feeling. Does this guy intend to do it all by himself? Is collaboration part of his skill set? Is he capable of compromise? Does he process new information and revise his position?  Is he ever just wrong?

The first word I think of when I hear him speak is ego. The second two words are enormous and gigantic. Then it comes to me: I remember the last time I watched a guy stand on a stage in front of an adoring crowd and declare, "Only I can fix it."  It did not end well.

Now, the post...

In the Los Angeles Unified School District we have selected a new superintendent who, according to reports, is just crazy about "transformation." Alberto Carvalho, late of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, talks a good and passionate game. But when he talks and says things like "invested in choice and innovation (41:35-42:10)," I see the life of public schools flash before my eyes. Is he serious when he equates district transformation with "the breaking down" and "deconstruction of the school system"? 

I will admit that when I worked in LAUSD, I frequently fantasized about "deconstructing" the system. Frustrated with the bureaucratic bumbling, angry at the arbitrary nature of policies and edicts, some of my most frequent dreams were of asteroids landing directly on district headquarters. But I don't think that's what Carvalho is talking about. 

When he talks about transformation, an outcome his cheerleaders on the school board and at the L.A. Times are eager to support, Carvalho is talking about firing people, pay-for-performance, and school choice, three terrible ideas that rely almost exclusively on what the big brains artfully call "data," by which they invariably mean test scores. (He's also talking about technology and the drive to "merge and migrate toward a digital environment." More on that in another post, but for now suffice to say that anybody who has gone through the last two years and still believes that tech is magic has no place in education.)

As a critical early step in his "transformation" of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Carvalho launched a campaign (33:50) of transfers, non-renewals and firings(18:00) based on "achievement data." What does that look like? Maybe you haul a few people downtown, you know, to make examples of them. You could put their test scores up on a big screen--or better yet, on television during a school board meeting--and demand explanations before publicly firing them. That might give the rest that warm, tingly feeling that goes with wondering if you'll have a job on Monday. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Proud of this purge, Carvalho boasts that he brought in Teach for America replacements to fill the vacancies and City Year for intervention. As if that were a viable solution.  Putting aside the mountains of evidence that experience is a crucial ingredient for effective teaching, in 2019 there were 700 TFA teachers in all of California. There are over 25,000 teachers in LAUSD. It wouldn't even make a dent.

So maybe you squeeze a bunch of district bureaucrats until they go running back to the classroom. News flash: There is a reason these people are not in the classroom. 

In our present environment, this approach doesn't pass the smell test.

It can't work. Not today and not in LAUSD. Just like other districts all across the country, LAUSD is fresh out of teachers. You can't just "bring in" a bunch of newbies to replace the "bad" teachers because nobody's out there. No one is scrambling to get in, battling to be first in line for a job that people hate you for doing and that pays barely enough to pay L.A. rent much less buy an L.A. house. It seems unlikely in the extreme that Carvalho will be able to fire his way to the top. Still, that doesn't mean he won't try. 

I'm not going to waste much time on performance pay. First, it's based on "data," which means test scores, which are bullshit. Second, the whole idea rests on the assumption that teachers are not presently doing the best job they know how to do. It imagines that if we can just sweeten the pot a little, that extra cash will get teachers off their lazy asses. Not only is this trope untrue--most of the teachers I ever worked with were ruining themselves working so hard (often trying to figure out how to teach to the test)--it's completely disingenuous. The hatcheteers don't give a shit about the top 20% of TestScoreProducers. They want to identify and eliminate the bottom 20% (for which there are no replacements). And third, if UTLA is worth its dues, it's never going to happen.*

Where Carvalho is really invested, the transformation theology for which he proselytizes relentlessly, is school choice. Time will tell, but what I've learned so far is alarming. Carvalho, from a news report back in 2012: 

"We are now working in an educational environment that is driven by choice. I believe that is a good thing. We need to actually be engaged in that choice movement. So if you do not ride that wave, you will succumb to it. I choose not to."

Aside from the fact that "there's nothing we can do about it so we might as well get on board" is a shitty ethos for a leader, it's clearly not an accurate representation of his position. He likes "school choice." He comes across as a true believer, and when he was still in Miami, Carvalho described his kind of school choice as transformational, recreating the district as "a hotbed of ideas and innovation." 

(I have to wonder what innovation even means if you and/or your principal can be fired based on data scores and the judgment of one person?) 

In a 2018 article, the corporate school-reform website The74 reported that then-Miami schools chief had a "sweeping vision for dramatically expanding educational choice," and went on to say this about Carvalho:

"Understand this fact: In Carvalho’s district, the fourth-largest in the country, more than 70 percent of the roughly 400,000 students do not attend their zoned public school. That’s not a typo. These students attend charter schools, take classes over the internet and at local colleges, and even attend private, faith-based schools — all with taxpayer funds or under tax credit scholarship programs." (emphasis mine)

The thing is, school choice is just one more reform in the never-ending search for a magic remedy for the crisis we're constantly told exists in public education. It can "theoretically"  produce some positive outcomes for some students, but creates many of the very inequities and disruptions it purports to address. Oh, and one other thing: The "choice" that parents and students make depends almost exclusively on data derived from scores on state-sponsored standardized tests. And that data is bullshit.

Of course, in this devotion to choice orthodoxy Carvalho has lots of company. Right this minute, the federal government's website continues to pimp "school choice." Powered by the radioactive decay of No Child Left Behind, their guide "Choosing A School For Your Child" urges parents to consider charter, private and religious schools, and it even recommends websites to compare them. First on the list:  www.greatschools.net (which is really .org and may have changed or been a typo in the pub) and which I will not link to because fuck them. 

GreatSchools, which got its seed money from a venture capital fund and has received substantial funding from the Gates and Walton Family Foundations (and free advertising from the Department of Education!), is one of several school ratings websites and one of the most well-known. They claim that their big, overarching "Summary Rating" is "based on four ratings, each of which is designed to show different facets of school success: the Student Progress Rating or Academic Progress Rating, College Readiness Rating, Equity Rating, and Test Score Rating." Sounds solid, right? Probably does to most parents, too. The thing is, every one of those measures is based on the same test scores. In fact, each "rating" is just another way of saying test scores.

More perniciously, even websites like Niche.com that claim to factor in reviews and information from "dozens of public data sources" are running a rigged game. Academics (test scores) count for 60% of the school's overall score, while teachers (teacher quality?) comprise 10%. And I bet you can't guess one of the ways their super duper algorithm determines teacher quality. If you said test scores, give yourself a round of applause. 

And here's a fun thought experiment: Those reviews? All that feedback from students and parents? Imagine the review for a teacher who is forced at the point of a termination letter to spend fifty percent of their time test-prepping, testing, test-analyzing and testing again.

Finally, when parents are surveyed, they list "Quality of teachers, principals, or other school staff" as their highest priority in choosing a school. Remember, these are schools they don't know and their kids haven't been to yet. What are the criteria for evaluating the "quality of teachers, principals, or other school staff"? Well if they're using GreatSchools or any of a number of other ratings sites, it's likely to be--wait for it--test scores. 

The bottom line is that all of these terrible ideas that Carvalho is bringing to LAUSD--school choice, performance pay for teachers, the firings--all of them depend entirely on "data," by which they mean "testing" by which they mean state-sponsored, corporate-controlled assessments.** 

It always comes down to test scores. This is the measurement to end all measurements. That teachers are forced to administer these assessments is akin to digging our own graves.

And The Funniest Joke in the World? The data is bullshit. Next time, some of the why.

*I'm not saying they aren't, but I still haven't heard the union's position on the choice of superintendent. 

**They might also refer to graduation rates. These, it turns out, are much more easily massaged. Stay tuned for a future post on "Mastery Grading."