Can We Not Have Nice Things? No, says New York Times.

Now, for something completely different... 

Feeling like I should take a break, step away from the end of the world for just a minute and return to a post I started a month ago on a topic less apocalyptic. Here are

a few words about charter schools and 
The Fucking New York Times

So I'm having coffee the other morning--now several weeks ago--and I pick up The New York Times and I see this article: "New Biden Administration Rules for Charter Schools Spur Bipartisan Backlash," by Erica L. Green.

And I say to myself, "There are new rules for charter schools?" because I had been gone for six weeks on The Greatest Road Trip Ever and I hadn't been paying attention to this stuff. So I start reading. 

Immediately, as often happens when reading the Times, my head starts to hurt and then I get angry--I swear if it weren't for the Arts Section and Tyler Kepner, I'd give it up for good. 

So I continue reading like I'm jabbing at a bruise to see if it still hurts and then, and I can not stress this enough, I am heartbroken all over again at the loss of the great Eric Boehlert. In addition to the personal tragedy for his family and friends, his death was a disaster for anyone interested in meaningful journalism criticism and for the nation. I keep searching and learning from, among many others, @jayrosen_nyu and PressThink, and from @froomkin and Press Watch, and lately from @equalityAlec and his newsletter. I also get an occasional laugh through grinding teeth thanks to New York Times Pitchbot and @DougJBalloon, and that's a good thing. Still, I miss Mr. Boehlert's voice.

Now, I'm not an expert, but I did teach English for twenty-five years and I do know how to read a newspaper. The fact is, every week I see things in the Times that I would not have accepted from my ninth graders. The unsupported claims, selective sourcing and vague attributions, all just go to show what I've been saying for a while now: The New York Times is killing us. With the Times, as with other Big Media, there is no issue that cannot be spun up into a both-sides political process story or reduced to a horse race. They twist facts to suit theories, they cobble together prefabricated narratives to soothe their corporate overlords and the "liberals" who stop by for a shot of self-righteousness with a crossword chaser. They live and breathe access, and we die a little every day because of it. 

It is especially galling when the Times slides by while still getting a bunch of credit for being objective and even left-leaning. I know. Wait until you hear what the Washington Post is up to. Maybe next week. For now, the Times.

First I want to stipulate that I don't know Erica L. Green and I have no idea what her politics are. There's no knowing--at least from where I'm sitting--how much of this is her and how much is the elite gravitational pull of the Times as it sucks up the work of good reporters and feeds it into the drivel machine where it gets processed and extruded as the prefab narratives acceptable to the editors. 

And so, even though she penned this latest steaming pile of charter puffery, she is well-regarded by some I respect. Therefore, no jumping to conclusions. Instead, I did my research. Maybe it's the Times. Maybe.

First I searched Green's twitter--as one does--where I saw photos of her gushing over Dean Baquet. Not a good start. Dean Baquet, for those of you who don't know, is the outgoing editor of the New York Times and bears enormous responsibility for the demolition of Hillary Clinton and the ascension of Donald Trump--all because Baquet was afraid of being called mean names, and let's be honest, also he got a little tingle out of  owning the Libs. 

Troubling but not dispositive, so in the spirit of fairness I kept looking. I checked out her LinkedIn profile and saw she has worked good jobs and won awards. Then I looked back at the charter school article at those weasel quotes and unsupported assertions and loaded language, none of which belongs in the work of a professional reporter published in a fancy newspaper. I kept thinking Green must know better.

I looked up other examples of her work in the Times archive and found an article she wrote a couple of years ago about charter schools double dipping--taking the Covid relief money sent to states for public schools AND grabbing up PPP money by suddenly declaring themselves businesses. Not surprising, but not bad reporting.

I also found a good article from 2020 on the impending changes at DOE in the transition from Trump to Biden. And back in 2019 she wrote a pretty good article hammering Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for her attempt to use pandemic relief funds to bolster private and religious schools and to support her push for vouchers. She also issued guidance that would force school districts to shift additional funds to wealthy private schools. A little over a month later Green wrote this one calling out DeVos for ditching an Obama rule protecting kids from for-profit colleges and universities who graduated them with lots of debt and no prospects. DeVos was a vile Education Secretary and ought to be hammered for any number of things--these among them. Green did, and she did it using--wait for it-- facts. 

It was straight reporting, using quotes actually attributed to actual people (there are a few "Educators are Pleading" and "For-profit leaders have said" and "Congressional Democrats and student advocates" are saying things and these and all the rest should have been much more specific in order to be more persuasive. Still and all, good, honest efforts. As I kept going I saw lots of articles saying meaningful things about important issues in education and about the students who are navigating the education system. I became confused. 

Then I found an article Green wrote in March of 2021 that was strongly critical of plans to give billions in pandemic assistance to non-public schools as part of the pending American Rescue Plan. Well, not just critical of the plans, exactly. But really hostile to a couple of the American Rescue Planners. Anyway, this article is revealing in a couple of different ways that show how we get to Biden and the charter school rules, and it bears an extended examination. What I'm saying is, this post is going to be about this article, from March 2021. We'll get to the charter school article misadventure next time.

From March 13, 2021

Schumer and a Teachers’ Union Leader Secure Billions for Private Schools

The article starts out looking like it's going to be a routine tale of "Dems in Disarray" where Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer diverted some American Rescue Plan funds from public to non-public schools, and a bunch of Democrats were pissed. In fact, the first twelve paragraphs are filled with scolding over changes in the direction of policy, snide accusations of secret shifty dealing, and finger-wagging reports of political infighting Dems in Disarray!

However, the whole thing reeks of editorializing and reads less like a news story and more like a complaint letter from a disgruntled constituent. Start with the subhead:

The pandemic relief bill includes $2.75 billion for private schools. How it got there is an unlikely political tale, involving Orthodox Jewish lobbying, the Senate majority leader and a teachers’ union president.

If that doesn't set off alarm bells or raise the hair on the back of your neck, you need to read it again. In addition to the typical shibboleths of Union! Teachers' Union!  we get not just lobbying, but Orthodox Jewish lobbying. This is a mistake, right? More on that later. Read on...

The opening paragraph (emphasis mine):

WASHINGTON — Tucked into the $1.9 trillion pandemic rescue law is something of a surprise coming from a Democratic Congress and a president long seen as a champion of public education — nearly $3 billion earmarked for private schools.

First, it's all so sneaky. The "surprise" money was "tucked" into the bill. One would be justified in wondering about the source of this characterization, and it might not be as troubling if it were not immediately followed by the "surprise" assertion, with the question left hanging: "something of a surprise" to whom? We find out later that the two parties willing to go on the record with their "surprise" and displeasure were a lobbyist for public school superintendents and the Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, both of whom understandably preferred the previous version of the bill. However, the use of the objective voice in promoting an entirely subjective point of view is... questionable. 

The second paragraph kicks it up a notch (emphasis mine). 

More surprising is who got it there: Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader whose loyalty to his constituents diverged from the wishes of his party, and Randi Weingarten, the leader of one of the nation’s most powerful teachers’ unions, who acknowledged that the federal government had an obligation to help all schools recover from the pandemic, even those who do not accept her group.

Describing Schumer's actions as a matter of "loyalty to his constituents" is a pretty loaded way to describe what happened, and suggesting that those actions represent a departure from the "wishes of his party" is just plain wrong. The final bill, as amended, passed 50-49 in the Senate and 220-211 in the House, having received a total of 268 out of 269 possible Democratic votes in Congress. 

Hardly a picture of party upheaval, but in Big Medialand, where everything is a squelch the rabble-fluff the gentry nail, you must use your depraved    Dems in Disarray! hammer. Now everybody get back to business as usual because that's where the money is.

In order to advance that narrative, the Times often resorts to journalistic tricks. The manipulation of quotations is something I used to have to warn my ninth-grade students about constantly. First up, and this one drives me crazy, is the use of what @airbagmoments refers to as "generic attribution" where reporters hide the identities of purported sources who are allowed to contribute to and shape the story without going on the record. I call them weasel quotes because, even though I accept that at their best they provide a window into that which otherwise would remain hidden, their use should be extremely limited. Unfortunately, an awful lot of fancy newspapers don't care much about that part.

What you won't see are direct, first-hand quotes from lawmakers who were really really pissed that Schumer pulled a fast one. You won't see stories of broken dishes over broken promises. Instead, the reporting works hard to manufacture conflict among Dems as "critics noted" that Dems had "signaled they wanted to take a different direction" using mostly secondhand complaints and a couple of "very disappointed"s. 

It takes a skilled, skeptical reporter to avoid the abuse of "on background" or "deep background" camouflage to pass on information. Sources can exploit their anonymity and the reporter to advance a personal agenda. Maybe they have an ax to grind or a rival they want to damage. 

Generally it's a reporter's job to suss out the motives of the source and factor them into the decision to use the information because using it is effectively putting the credibility of the reporter and the news outlet up as collateral against the veracity of the information. They are vouching for the source and their motives.

Even the style manual  (AP, because who wants to shell out ten bucks for the NY Times book which, if different, explains a lot) says you "should provide information about the setting in which a quotation was obtained," and you need a very good reason to accept information that you intend to print anonymously. Is ginning up a fake fight between Democratic insiders really that good a reason? Would even a real fight be good enough? 

At any rate, it appears that the story is just too juicy to pass up, even if it's delivered by a bunch of gossips "who wish to remain anonymous." (And not for nothing, where are the stories of Republicans at each other's throats over... whatever it is they believe in? I guess the Cheney-Kinsinger axis of resistance scratches that itch for this decade, although I struggle to find stories of McConnell aides talking about how "insulted" he is. Republicans don't talk, you say? That's one canned narrative. Reporters aren't digging hard enough, I say. Might ruin the fairy story )

At its worst, this sort of generic or weasel attribution--the whole "critics" or "advocates" or "people said" bullshit--is just a dodge, a method of slipping in a point of view that the writer finds useful. 

There's so much wrong with the article that, before we get even further into the weeds, we need to state for the record some of the information the article glosses over on its way to where it always wanted to go.

First, the money shot:

Even though the headline cries "Billions for Private Schools," except for one sentence attacking Schumer for including "12 times more funding than the House had allowed," it isn't until the jumbled thirteenth paragraph that the article supplies the following crucial context for the funding, and even then it's included grudgingly as justification for a concession (emphasis mine):

The magnitude of the overall education funding — more than double the amount of schools funding allocated in the last two relief bills combined — played some part in the concession that private schools should continue to receive billions in relief funds. The $125 billion in funding for K-12 education requires districts to set aside percentages of funding to address learning loss, invest in summer school and other programming to help students recover from educational disruptions during the pandemic.

Yes, that's right. The school funding in this "controversial" bill, at $125 billion, is twice the amount included in the two previous bills, combined. It's even more if you include the $39 billion for early childhood programs. If you're thinking "That's a lot of money," you are correct. In fact, using the report's own numbers, the 2.75 billion for non-public schools is about two percent of funds marked for education. Nevertheless, the problem is billions for private schools! 

Just three paragraphs later, we are told the rest of the truth about the money: There's no there there. In fact, the $2.75 billion represents essentially no change from the big Coronavirus relief bill--The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021--passed just a few months earlier in December 2020. No change. According to the Times' own reporting, the funding for private and parochial schools in the 2020 bill was $2.75 billion, exactly the same as this 2021 bill, not that you'd know that from this paragraph:

Proponents of the move argue that it was merely a continuation of the same amount afforded to private schools — which also had access to the government’s aid program for small businesses earlier in the pandemic — in a $2.3 trillion catchall package passed in December.

"Proponents argue" is more than clumsy and worse than poor reporting. It's dishonest. Not only do "proponents" of the funding argue that. It happens to be true.  Also true? The same safeguards were adopted to ensure the funds went to the poorest schools.

So if there's tons of money for public schools and the amount of money for non-public schools is the same, maybe this overheated article is not really about the money. What then? What's all the hubbub?

Now, into the weeds, and as we travel through, please recall that we're here because this American Rescue Plan article is filled with the same kinds of imprecision and journalistic sleight-of-hand that are present in the more recent one this past May, the one on charter schools--the one that started this whole thing and to which we'll return next time barring yet another apocalypse. The two pieces have a lot in common and looking at these problems here will help when we get to looking at them there.

Taken at face value, this Schumer-Weingarten article in brief:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, under pressure from Orthodox Jewish lobbyists and his "constituents," conspired with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten (who reversed her TrumpDeVos era opposition), to surreptitiously divert $2.7 billion of the American Rescue Plan from public to non-public schools, betraying and infuriating Democratic colleagues who were caught off-guard.

But a lot of that doesn't really hold water. Take the lobbying. Nathan J. Diament, the Executive Director for the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center (described in the article as "the executive director for public policy at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America,")  says they are "very appreciative of what Senator Schumer did." I say, why wouldn't they be? 

Then take a look at this sentence, from the third paragraph of the article: 

The deal, which came after Mr. Schumer was lobbied by the powerful Orthodox Jewish community in New York City, riled other Democratic leaders and public school advocates who have spent years beating back efforts by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to funnel federal money to private schools, including in the last two coronavirus relief bills.

"The deal, which came after Mr. Schumer was lobbied by the powerful Orthodox Jewish community in New York City..." is clearly meant to have us conclude that the lobbying led to the deal, but that is not what the article says. In fact, the article provides no evidence for the causal relationship between the change in the bill and the lobbying, which we are told has been going on for a long time. Instead, it settles for winking associations we are supposed to assemble into the expected conclusions. There may be proof somewhere, but it isn't in the article, and since the premise of the article is that the lobbying was instrumental, you'd think that if the reporter had evidence, they would have presented it. 

Surely the writer is aware that just because one thing follows another, that does not mean it was caused by it. My ninth graders came to understand the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy; has the Times? This is misleading, and without actual evidence, it is wrong.

So that's the lobbying. Now, the fury. The other piece of that sentence I want to deal with is "riled other Democratic leaders and public school advocates." Were they "riled," though? We're told that "Mr. Schumer's move created significant intraparty clashes behind the scenes" but the evidence in the article is thin to the point of transparency. 

We are told that "House Democrats expressly sought to curtail such funding" and some House Democrats such as Chairman Scott may have been vexed that Schumer inserted the provision for funding private schools rather than taking advantage of the post-TrumpDeVos landscape to affirm the party's opposition to using public funds for private schooling, but other than some overblown "slippery slope" "floodgates" hyperbole from the lobbyist for public school superintendents and that secondhand "people familiar with" stuff putatively from Robert C. Scott, chairman of the House education committee, who had his staff convey that "he was 'insulted,'" there is no evidence of any big brouhaha.

And apparently it didn't bother Representative Scott that much, as he went right ahead and voted for the amended bill, along with 268 out of 269 of his Democratic colleagues and released this statement regarding the bill's passage in which he says, in part: 

“I am pleased that the Education and Labor Committee was able to take a leadership role in crafting this COVID-19 relief package, and I am grateful to my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate for supporting this critical funding for K-12 education.”

We're also told that Senator Patty Murray was one of the disaffected Dems, but the proof isn't in the pudding: 

Senator Patty Murray, the chairwoman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was said to have been so unhappy that she fought to secure last-minute language that stipulated the money be used for “nonpublic schools that enroll a significant percentage of low‐​income students and are most impacted by the qualifying emergency.”

Said to have been? Really? By? To? This tidbit is used early in the article to bolster the notion of Democratic discord. But a fair reading of the article shows that Murray was simply concerned that the new bill contain the same protections requiring public funds go to the poorest non-public schools as were in the previous December 2020 bill. And those changes were made. In fact, in the article's very next sentence Murray declares how proud she is of "what the American Rescue Plan will deliver to our students and schools...." 

Once again The New York Times, defenders of the rich and powerful, safe space for the privileged to exchange knowing nods and clutch their pearls, finds a way to turn an enormous victory for the American people into bad news for Democrats. Never miss an opportunity to reinforce the narrative. 

This obsession with portraying the Democrats as constantly tangled up in internal conflict is a favorite trope of Big Media in general and The New York Times in particular. Loaded language and allusions to people being "very upset," are key tools in promoting the irresistible "Dems in Disarray" narrative. It's no surprise to find them here, although the lengths to which this article goes to advance that narrative are stunning. 

It's clear that the summary above (Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, under pressure...) does not accurately capture the article. It's akin to a conjuring trick, using misdirection and suggestion to convince the audience of one thing while actually saying something else. I decided it would be a good idea to look behind the curtain and try to identify the real premise of the piece. Now, you might say that a straight news piece ought not to have a premise, and I might agree, except I think there's a qualifier: the premise of a straight news piece ought to be a fact or inference directly drawn from facts, and should be free of judgment. "Trump pressured the Justice Department to advance his plan to overturn the election" is a legitimate premise if followed by supporting facts that show it to be true. 

The true premise of this piece seems to be this: Democrats should not have withdrawn their objections to funding for private schools.

If you said "why would a news article take a position on what the Democrats should or should not have done?" you are asking the right question. That doesn't stop the writer, though, as this "should not have" sentiment is conveyed in various ways throughout the piece. We see it, as we often do, by proxy through the elevation of comments from critics both named and unnamed, and by devaluing responses from supporters of the funding shift. Also, more perniciously, we see the claim advanced using language more suited to a polemic than a news story, language that reveals a fatal bias regarding the events contained in the article.

We've already talked about the weak and deceptive sourcing and the use of those "quotations" to stitch together a misleading narrative, and a lot of the loaded language in the article is delivered by proxy in those quotes.  Just briefly I'd like to focus on the language used to create and support the reader's misimpressions.

Start with the headline of the article:

Schumer and a Teachers’ Union Leader Secure Billions for Private Schools

Just a word about "billions." Sounds like a lot, right? And it's technically true, but we're talking about 2.7 "billions" out of about 125 billions, or less than 2%. It's still a lot, but billions, without context, sounds scarier. 

Throughout the article the choice of words to describe people and events leads to what feels like a predetermined narrative--manipulation and betrayal by Schumer and Weingarten. The story is "an unlikely political tale" of "surprise" money Schumer "tucked" into a bill "in the 11th hour" leading to "clashes" because colleagues were "caught... off guard."  

The article reserves special rancor for Randi Weingarten, who is consistently identified as "the leader of one of the nation’s most powerful teachers’ unions," like it's a pejorative. This is nothing new for the American Federation of Teachers   president. She is frequently a target of the assembled armies in the school choice movement. A staunch opponent of vouchers and proponent of charter regulation, she has often come under intense attacks from school choicers and allied anti-union associates. 

First, the article inflates Weingarten to chief power broker, reporting that "several people said" she was "[i]ntegral to swaying Democrats to go along, particularly Ms. Pelosi." 

Oh, several people said. What did she do, anyway? Hypnotize them? You know how devious those... union leaders are.

The article goes on to charge Weingarten with reversing her earlier opposition, withdrawing her objection to the shift of public money to private schools describing it this way (emphasis mine):

Last year, Ms. Weingarten led calls to reject orders from Ms. DeVos to force public school districts to increase the amount of federal relief funding they share with private schools, beyond what the law required to help them recover.

At the time, private schools were going out of business               everyday [sic], particularly small schools that served predominantly low-income students, and private schools were among the only ones still trying to keep their doors open for in-person learning during the pandemic.

But Ms. Weingarten said Ms. DeVos’s guidance “funnels more money to private schools and undercuts the aid that goes to the students who need it most” because the funding could have supported wealthy students.

This time around, Ms. Weingarten changed her tune.

But what Weingarten had actually opposed was the diversion of money already appropriated for public schools in the CARES Act, passed by Congress in March of 2020. The DeVos DOE followed up with guidance shifting funds from public to private schools including religious schools she had long supported. Her unilateral attempt to, according to NPR, "reroute hundreds of millions of dollars in coronavirus aid money to K-12 private school students." What does that have to do with 2021's 125 billion dollar bill passed entirely and almost unanimously by Congressional Democrats. 

The DeVos guidance and the rule that accompanied it in June 2020, amounted to a scheme to bypass the clear language of the CARES Act which called for the Title 1 approach of tying funding to numbers of low-income students. Instead, DeVos wanted an increase in the amount of money governors and school districts would be required to hand over to private schools, even those serving wealthy student populations. It was a money grab and Weingarten, along with national school superintendents association executive director Dan Domenech, advised school districts to just ignore it. 

Anybody can see the difference between siphoning off funding and providing more funding. Anybody can see the difference between funding rich schools and funding poor schools. Almost anybody. 

In the second paragraph there are things so wrong and strange that we need to take them one at a time. First, we step through the looking-glass to a place where, inexplicably, sympathy for private schools rolls down like waters. Weingarten has been a villain for supporting public money for private schools, but is now also condemned for not doing it before. We're told that "private schools were going out of business everyday [sic]." Putting aside the everyday problem of every day, what is the source of this information? Where is the data? If you said "not there" you win. This is an assertion in support of a point of view. 

Next we are told that the schools most impacted were "particularly small schools that served predominantly low-income students." Ouch! I don't know how one collects that data, and apparently neither does the writer because there is no evidence here to substantiate this claim. 

Finally we learn that those small schools serving poor kids and going out of business every day were "among the only ones still trying to keep their doors open for in-person learning during the pandemic." Is that even true? "Among" is a weasel word that lets you lump things together to make a point. "The Chicago Cubs are among the best 30 teams in Major League Baseball." I was among the top 35,000 teachers in Los Angeles in my time. 

At least the third paragraph is a straightforward magic trick. We see a fact offered as Weingarten's opinion, devaluing the notion that federal funding for wealthier families in wealthier schools should take a back seat to poor schools. 

The focus on Weingarten is a bit bizarre and feels almost personal. She worked for and supported a bill that provided twice as much money to public schools than previous bills combined. The bill allowed for the same amount for non-public school students as before, and contained similar protections to ensure the cash got to the neediest schools. Yet, she "changed her tune." Only, I can't find any evidence that she actually did.

I can find no evidence that Weingarten opposed the December 2020 bill because of its 2.75 billions for states to support non-public schools. It may exist, but I don't see it in this article and I haven't found it in contemporaneous reports about the passage of that previous bill. In fact, an article in the December 4, 2020 issue of Forward, weeks before the December 2020 bill was passed, described Weingarten's position this way: 

Randi Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers president, said she is fine with some of the current federal programs that support certain low-income students and those with disabilities who attend private schools.

“There are different kinds of ways that we have been able to support religious institutions,” Weingarten said. “Unfortunately in the last few years the Trump administration and Betsy DeVos in particular has tried to pit communities against each other rather than trying to find ways to address the real needs.”

To my ear, this is no different from the position Weingarten took on the 2021 bill. In fact, comparing Weingarten's opposition to DeVos's scheme to hijack public school funding to Schumer's legislative maneuvering and Weingarten's support for the ARP is disingenuous. 

 Yet, this is what we're left with:

This time around, Ms. Weingarten changed her tune.

All this is just daft. The article seems to be condemning Weingarten not only for changing her position but also for not changing it sooner--when it could have helped all those poor private schools. Which were actually rich, because that was the DeVos policy that Weingarten actually opposed. Which means it wasn't really a change of position at all.

The concern in this section for all those poor rich private schools seem inconsistent with the foregoing tone of the piece. It shimmers with resentment over the private schools that didn't survive and puts the responsibility squarely on Randi Weingarten. Why all the hyperventilating? What is the article suggesting here? That Weingarten killed all these poor private schools singlehandedly? That she wanted to kill them when they were a certain kind of school but now she "changed her tune"? 

Even if it were true, it would seem like a bizarre way of describing it. I'm guessing "changed her tune" is fancy reporter speak for "I don't like her." 

Or maybe the article is angry with unions and organized labor in general. Maybe that's why Weingarten's union, the American Federation of Teachers, is never mentioned by name (I fixed that here) and is described, along with its million-and-a-half members, as "her group." Is there anti-labor sentiment at the New York Times? Is their antipathy for the teachers union connected to their fondness for charter schools? Asking for a couple million friends. 

Or... maybe the article is just making the case that in-person learning is a good thing. Maybe the best thing, even in December 2020. But good for whom? Is this just more Timesian sucking up to the beautiful people in the audience whose    schools  all have nice air conditioning and the nanny quit and the kids are driving them nuts?

At any rate, the derision continues in the very next paragraph as Weingarten explains her decision (emphasis mine):

In an interview, she defended her support of the [funding for non-public schools] provision, saying that it was different from previous efforts to fund private schools that she had protested under the Trump administration, which sought to carve out a more significant percentage of funding and use it to advance private school tuition vouchers. The new law also had more safeguards, she said, such as requiring that it be spent on poor students and stipulating that private schools not be reimbursed.

This is just not honest. Weingarten didn't just say the bill was different; it was different. Prohibitions on vouchers. Preferences for private schools serving the neediest students. And lots of people were saying so including the American Association of School Administrators and Speaker Pelosi and Senator Murray.     Something else not honest: embedding a clearly factual statement ("which sought... vouchers") at the end of a "she said" sentence in order to devalue it or imply that it's a matter of opinion. Not good. 

But there's something else not right here. What is the article comparing in order to demonstrate Weingarten's "change of tune"? Her positions on two different Covid relief bills? No. The article compares Weingarten's opposition to the extralegal DeVos scheme with Chuck Schumer's legislative maneuvering which, again, resulted in a bill approved by Democrats almost unanimously. Not apples to apples. Apples to larceny.

I've been working on this post for weeks, and up to now I haven't been able to figure out why it's been so difficult. Now I think I know. It seems to me the article promotes two notions: 1. Schumer is a sneaky bastard who played hardball with the amendment process and pissed off a bunch of Democrats in the House, which we dealt with earlier, and 2. Chuck Schumer and Randi Weingarten are sneaky bastards who betrayed their principles in shifting public money to private schools. The trouble is, the article fails to adequately support one and conflates several different ideas in order to support the other. 

We've already dealt with the questionable use of generic quotations to construct and support the narrative of Democratic betrayal and infighting. That was easy. What was not easy--for me, anyway--was untangling the conflation of Weingarten's opposition to DeVos's extralegal attempts to divert to private schools funds already appropriated for public schools  with Weingarten's support for a legislative amendment shifting education funds from public schools to private schools that met a Title 1 threshold of poorer kids. 

In other words, the article conflates the American Relief Plan's "Schumer" amendment and Secretary DeVos's mission to destroy public schooling. 

Throughout most of 2020, Democrats (including Chairman Scott) strongly opposed DeVos's efforts to promote vouchers and to force public school districts to shift additional money away from their own budgets to support area non-public schools. DeVos did this through guidance she issued from the Trump Department of Education (here again is a description of that guidance as the original seems to be gone) and which was reported in The New York Times by Erica L. Green. Democrats were successful in that effort to push back. 

On the other hand, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (passed December 2020) included 2.75 billion dollars for non-public schools and passed 92-6 in the Senate where it got every Democratic vote and in the House 359-53 with 230 out of 232 Democratic votes. I can find no reports of Democratic opposition to the bill based on its inclusion of the funds for non-public schools. 

And again, the American Rescue Plan (March 2021) which contained the "Schumer" amendment providing the 2.75 billion for private schools and which putatively reflected a betrayal of Democratic opposition to public funds for private schools (even though containing the same amount of funding for private schools) pass about three months later with the votes of every single Democratic Senator and 220 out of 221 Representatives. 

And yet we get this: 

Democrats had railed against the push by President Donald J. Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, to use pandemic relief bills to aid private schools, only to do it themselves.

This doesn't pass the smell test. DeVos did not use the bill to aid schools and programs she favored. She went outside the bill to do so. That is what Democrats "railed against." 

The article finishes with a quote from the executive director for public policy at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the guy who lobbied Schumer, suggesting we all just move along; there's nothing to see here.    

Mr. Diament said that he did not expect that private schools would see this as a precedent to seek other forms of funding.

“In emergency contexts, whether they’re hurricanes, earthquakes, or global pandemics, those are situations where we need to all be in this together,” he said. “Those are exceptional situations, and that’s how they should be treated.”

After all the Dem-bashing over changing the bill, the article ends with the reassurance that it doesn't really mean what it clearly means: that the U.S. Government is now in the business of funding private religious schools. (See Espinoza v Montana, Carson v. Makin, Kennedy v Bremerton, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera)

To conclude, the surprise shift of funds from public to non-public schools may have been a surprise to Democrats, and it may have caused tension within the party, and it may have been done under pressure from Schumer's Jewish constituents in collaboration with AFT president Randi Weingarten, but there is precious little evidence in this article to support those claims. Just the other morning I read a Charles Blow opinion piece on the Times Op-Ed page and was shocked at how much better sourced and supported his opinion piece was than this ostensibly straight news. 

It is now the later I promised, and we're returning to what is to my eyes a very troubling tone in the article. I'll report; you decide.

Now I don't want to be overly sensitive, but two Jewish leaders--one the leader of a union--being castigated over a change in a bill amounting to 2% and supported by 99.996 % of the caucus is not a good look for the Times or anybody else. 

Using loaded language evoking duplicity (Schumer's "loyalty to his constituents diverged from the wishes of his party" and resulted in "Mr. Schumer's reversal," while Ms. Weingarten "changed her tune") and underhandedness (Mr. Schumer "caught his Democratic colleagues off guard" with the money he "tucked into" the bill "in the 11th hour" at the behest of "Jewish leaders in New York" through their "Orthodox Jewish lobbying," specifically from "Nathan J. Diament, the executive director for public policy at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.") is disquieting and certainly open to misinterpretation.

To be fair, the article does include this single sentence as a standalone paragraph, for balance, I guess: 

"Mr. Schumer also faced pressure from a number of leaders in New York’s Catholic school ecosystem." 

It also reminds us that as a United States senator, Schumer has 19.51 million constituents, including lots of Jews and lots of Catholics and lots of other faiths including Mets fans. In the whole state, there are about 1.75 million Jews  with approximately 550,000 of them Orthodox. 

After the brief nod to Catholics (and perhaps other?) interested parties who might like to see public money going to help fund their private schools, the next sentence begins, "In a statement to Jewish Insider, Mr. Schumer said..." and includes--just in case you missed it--reassurances that the bill will "enable private schools, like yeshivas and more, to receive assistance..." Magnifying the Orthodox Jewish community to bolster this conspiracy is... unseemly.

The truth is, the article offers no evidence whatsoever that the so-called "Jewish lobby" was the decisive force in changing the bill. Diament was clearly pleased to have successfully advocated for a restoration of money for private schools, as were "a number of leaders in New York’s Catholic school ecosystem" presumably, although the article never names them or the source of this information.

The final paragraph of the Weingarten story comes below. See if you can spot the connection to Schumer and Yeshivas.

“All of our children need to survive, and need to recover post-Covid, and it would be a ‘shonda’ if we didn’t actually provide the emotional support and nonreligious supports that all of our children need right now and in the aftermath of this emergency,” she said, using a Yiddish word for shame.

I'm aware of the thorny nature of these observations and I do not share them lightly. I don't ascribe any particular motivations to the writer or any specific biases apart from a reverence for privilege that writing for the Times requires. However, neither do I want to be squishy and pretend what I'm seeing isn't really there. You can see for yourself.

I understand that no reporter--no writer--really writes alone. And I know the Times must have armies of editors and dozens of bosses standing between the keyboard and publication. Nevertheless, the reliance on anonymous sourcing, the conflation of events to support a narrative, and the "Jewish conspiracy" tone are disturbing.

I like to think that Erica L. Green knows better--I've seen it--and that this is a New York Times problem. Green has an enormous platform and public education really needs passionate, powerful voices to help tell our true story. Please do better.

Even though it is The Fucking New York Times.

Next week: We return to the article that started this whole mess:

"New Biden Administration Rules for Charter Schools Spur Bipartisan Backlash," by Erica L. Green.

Charter schools, new rules, what do you think the Times is going to say?

The Times is gonna Times. 

It's time for a national strike.

That last post was weird--both dogmatic and hopeless. In contrast, this post will be... shorter: It's time for a national strike.

Two things happened. First, I went to the March for Our Lives on Saturday here in Los Angeles. The crowd was smaller than I hoped it would be and smaller nationally than 2018. Cameron Kasky spoke and he said the following, as reported by Rebecca Schneid and James Rainey in the Los Angeles Times :

“Our generation has grown up watching these horrific shootings unfold,” said Cameron Kasky, 21. “And we see the same cycle repeat itself: mass murders, specifically with an AR-15. Public outrage, thoughts and prayers, rinse and repeat.”

Kasky is a survivor of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, and helped organize the first nationwide March for Our Lives protest.

There was a sense of hopelessness in his voice, though — a recognition that there are fewer demonstrators around the country than there were in 2018, and a fear that people believe that nothing will change.

Kasky said he doesn’t blame anyone; he just wants the anger to still be there, and he wants politicians to be as uncomfortable going out in public as children are going to school.

“Don’t march because you think that the Senate is going to pass anything,” he said, his voice rising. “March to show them how angry we are. March to show them that we are not going to stop until they do what we demand.”

When I hear "a sense of hopelessness" and "a fear that people believe that nothing will change" I know exactly what that feels like. In my last post, I urged Democrats to do something and I wrote down some of them, but now that I think about it, that's not exactly what I meant. Lots of us are doing lots of things, from backing progressive candidates to demonstrating for change. It's not enough. 

I can't introduce a bill or vote for one. I can't withhold DNCC funds from Joe Manchin or strip him of his committee assignments. I can't sign an executive order. I can't go on television or hold a press conference to call out the Republicans. I can't stop Joe Biden or Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi or what-the-fuck Sonia Sotomayor from calling them our buddies. I can't stand in front of the country and say "No, there are not good people on both sides."

Those things require our elected leaders to act, and we can shout all we want about how we're not going to give up until "they do what we demand" but what if they never do? No matter how much we march or "show them how angry we are," all they have to do is wait it out until we give up. How in hell are we supposed to keep going?

A second thing happened. I read Michelle Goldberg's column in today's New York Times, a typically superficial glance at feminism as fashion, but something rang so true I had to write this post. In the wake of the leaked upcoming reversal of Roe v. Wade, the expectation was that tens of thousands would turn out for pro-choice rallies, but in fact, like the March for Our Lives, crowds were much smaller. One wonders what a 2022 Black Lives Matter march would look like.

It's not us. Our rallies are not smaller because we're tired or our ideas are out of fashion. Our marches don't lack energy because we're out of enthusiasm but because we're running out of hope that they can make a difference. That's on our political leaders. Our leaders need to lead; call it the leadership imperative. They need to give us hope that if we trust them with our nation, if we do what we can do, they will do what is necessary to save our democracy.

Another march isn't going to do it. Even five more Democrats in Congress isn't going to lead to the changes on guns, racial justice, voting rights, climate policy, wealth disparity, schooling, and on and on.  

Our elected leaders keep asking us for money, for votes, for more Democrats. They say "make your voices heard." I say, if they can't hear us now, they're not listening. 

It's time for a national strike. It's the only thing short of violence that might get their attention. If it doesn't work, there's always plan B.

It's the guns.

So it's been a while.

I was working on a School Choice series of posts prompted by an article in The New York Times, and then Uvalde happened. Suddenly charter schools didn't seem like the most important thing, but I couldn't find a way to write about the murders of those kids and their teachers, so I didn't.

There's little I can add to the frustration and anger others have expressed over our inability to stop or even try seriously to address the horror of heavily armed marauders entering schools and destroying children with weapons of war. Like many of you, I have participated in countless "live shooter" drills over the years and been part of more than a few incidents that were not drills. Fortunately, for the most part, nobody died, but that's just luck. I know that many of you have not been as lucky.

And every time it happens, especially when the massacre is big enough for other people to notice, we say "Help us! Please, do something!" And every time, all we hear is what we can't do. And whether the reason is mental illness or gun culture or politics or (a misreading of) the Second Amendment, teachers look at their students and each other, and we see dead people.

I think about the thousands of students I got to know over my twenty-five years in the business. I think about the books we read and the debates we had. The bad jokes. The perfect days and the times we kind of hated each other. I think of the fantasy futures they dreamed for themselves, and I think of their families and the plans they all made together. I think of secrets they shared because they knew I'd never tell. They knew I'd never hurt them on purpose.

Then I think about all the teachers and counselors and custodians I've known, including many friends still working in schools and wondering if they will be next. And I think of the deans and administrators and coaches and office techs and cafeteria workers I've met. And I put them all into a movie in my brain where I can picture their faces and hear their voices, and I wish I could think of an ending where everybody gets their fantasy future just like I did, but right now I can't. All I see is dead people.

What a society cares about is always right in front of us and it isn't what we say. For a long time teachers have known that in this country we don't care about most kids. If we did, schools would look like luxury boxes in brand new sports arenas and educators would get paid like hedge fund managers. 

Instead, we shop for bargains. For an enormous number of us, school is provided grudgingly, not as a common good but as some kind of giveaway to somebody else's kids. It's run by people we don't understand and don't trust and our kids come home asking uncomfortable or unanswerable questions. We do not like school.

We pretend otherwise. We pretend to believe school is a great leveler, the gateway to opportunity. It's where we learn that we're all in this together, members of one nation. It's where we send "our babies" to learn to think, to grow, to laugh, cry, and make the memories they'll cherish the rest of their lives. Just like us. It's where we send them to be safe because we can't always be there. 

But it's just pretend. Once the Big Shots and their progeny are safe in their well-appointed secure locations, we pit parents and schools against each other in a grim hunger games for what's left over. Crumbling schools. No counselors no nurses no music no art NO NEW TAXES!  Failing schools. Test scores! Teachers union! Teachers are racists. Teachers are groomers. This is what we really think of schools. We hate them.

Every teacher knows this. What has shocked me is how little we care for the kids in them. I admit I shouldn't be surprised. I have seen kids come to school hungry and in tears. I have had to intervene when adults shamed their kids and screamed at them or called them names. I did not think we would stand back and let them get murdered. 

That's what we're doing. The adults in this country have determined that guns are more important to us than our children. That's why, instead of addressing the easy availability of weapons of war, we'll try anything else. One door. Armed guards. Armed teachers, for fuck's sake. (You might want to ask a few principals about this first.) We will do anything except fix the problem because we have decided that these kids--these particular kids--are expendable. They are almost always somebody else's kids, anyway.             

I knew I shoulda turned left at Albuquerque

It's good to be back.

I wrote most of the following post over a month ago. Then my wife and I and two dogs went on a road trip in a camper van because we never had. Now it's five weeks and seven thousand miles later and we're back in L.A.  

At some point in your life you have to do things because if you don't, you never will. 

The trip was incredible and I may talk more about it in future posts once I've had some time to make sense of it. I just want to acknowledge that, for those of you still in the game, getting up at 5:30 every morning, making phone calls and grading papers every night, lots of things have gotten worse. 

One thing that hasn't? Retirement is fucking awesome. 

What's up, Doc?

I began this whole blog adventure with the announcement that I had retired and written a book. Well, that was a year ago and so far I am alarmingly close to becoming an example of how to waste a perfectly good retirement. Do not let this happen to you. 

Those of you toiling every day in unsafe conditions for no credit and very little money while ruled by imbeciles whose only concern is avoiding the critical eye of their superiors long enough to move up another rung on Peter Principle's ladder know that the job is impossible. 

Only it's not. Not quite. Used to be that summers were awesome. I remember actually thinking "There's no vacation like a teacher vacation." I'm sure it was because I finished every semester of every year completely destroyed, and then you walk out of the building on that last day and your room is done and your rollbook is turned in and you've got all your signatures including the computer nazi (used to be the AV coordinator) and you were free. Really free. Fucking free.

And you didn't have to think about school or school kids or for fuck's sake school administrators for months. You could breathe. You could laugh. You could drink all day and sleep at night--or the other way around. Anyway, I could. If you're married with kids, your mileage may vary.

That wasn't true the last five or ten years of my career. I had summer trainings and  hilariously named Professional Developments. I had extra lesson plans and tests to write to satisfy consultants and administrators who never read them but criticized them anyway. It was not the same feeling.

And then I retired, and it's all good once again. Like when the world was young.

What I'm saying is that retirement is totally fucking worth it, and I haven't even done it right yet.

But I'm going to. After back surgery left me pain-free for the first time in ten years, after rehabbing for a year and losing twenty pounds just by walking every day because I now have time to walk every day, I'm about to do one of those things retired people say they're going to do when they retire but often never do. I'm going on a cross-country road trip in a camper van. 

Never done it before--camped my way across the country. There's lots to teach myself and lots of unknown unknowns that I'll just have to solve on the fly. It's project-based learning! Unlikely to show up on any state-sponsored standardized test. What would the standards even be? 

ELA r.m.20.22.1

• Consult general and specialized reference materials to select routes and identify appropriate stops.

ELA i.s.20.22.1

• Interpret signs and symbols in context and analyze their role in travel.

Math v.v.20.22.1

• Solve problems involving velocity and other quantities that can be represented by vectors.

Math v.v.20.22.2

• Given two vectors in magnitude and direction form, determine the magnitude and direction of their sum.

As you can see, this set of "standards" is like any set delivered to you by people who have no idea what thinking is or what students do or what a real classroom looks like. These, like all of them, are as worthless as an ELA standard that says, "Write a sentence" without dealing with "about what?" and, fundamentally, "how well?" Standards are easy; analysis is hard. Evaluation is hard. Coming up with meaningful rubrics? Hard.

What would a rubric for my trip look like? How well do I have to interpret signs and symbols, understand their context, and analyze them? How do I know well from a little less well from not well at all? What if I make a mistake and end up someplace wonderful? Does that count for me or against me?

And how would you test for it? State-sponsored standardized tests use the same yardstick for everything whether it is meaningful or not. How successful is Hamlet? How "proficient" is Between the World and Me? Standardized answer? One hundred seventy-six pages.

How do you measure a project requiring multiple skills and a broad range of expertise, which is as much art and chance as math and evidence? How well did you perform your trip? Six thousand miles. How did you do with those vectors? Thirty days.

Bullshit.

Success, proficiency, mastery. If I survive the trip and have fun, I won't need to ask myself if I had enough fun to be proficient. I'll be a success. 

I may write about school if something in particular gets under my skin, but mostly I'll just keep you posted on the joys of retirement--if only to give you something to look forward to and encourage you to keep going. It gets better.

Okay. One more.

Test Scores are bullshit. Secret data is evil bullshit.

Peter Greene @palan57,  Senior Education Contributor for Forbes and author of the excellent CURMUDGIFICATION CURMUDGUCATION (updated and corrected) blog, has a new article in Forbes that describes legislation now before Congress. The bill, whose title is long enough to look like satire but just long enough to be acronymically shortened to "the America COMPETES Act," contains a "College Transparency" amendment introduced by Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI). 

Aimed at supporting "'the next generation of American workers,'" according to Levin, the amendment means to help "'our young people transition seamlessly into good-paying careers is to make sure that high-quality education and job training is affordable and accessible to all.'" 

What does the bill do? From Greene's article:

It requires the government to collect student-level data reporting enrollment, persistence, retention, transfer, and completion measures for all credentials, plus any other data the advisory committee deems necessary.

The bill also requires the collection of “post-completion outcomes for all postsecondary students, including earnings, employment, and further education” both immediately after leaving postsecondary education and “at time intervals appropriate to the credential sought and earned.” That data collection is to be periodically checked against data held by other agencies, such as Defense and the Social Security Administration. But this calls for lifetime data collection of anyone who attended a postsecondary institution.

Dressed up as a way to help the U.S. compete economically around the world, the legislation, the article notes that the law ensures that if you "Go to college or any other post-high school institution... the federal government will watch you for the rest of your life." It is, as Greene puts it, "a plan for lifetime data tracking of college students."

Is this what we want? To cavalierly feed students to the machine?  Affected students might be forgiven for one day shaking their heads and lamenting, like the miners in Matewan, "We've had about all the help we can stand." (h/t John Sayles) Better yet, "We asked for help, and this is what you give us?"

The truth is, that's not the half of it. Data collection and student tracking is being done right now in public schools all the way down into elementary. It's secret--or at least not discussed in polite company among educators who don't want to acknowledge the truth. And it's done by the government and government-sponsored entities. 

My experience, from Answer Key:

This is so bad I suppressed my own awareness of it and my own complicity in its collection. Thank you to my friend Mike for reminding me. 

In today’s Los Angeles Times there is an Op-Ed written by Caleb Scharf, Columbia University’s director of astrobiology. Just the title creeps me out: “We are our data, our data are us.” In the article, Scharf compares the “informational ocean” we’re all swimming in to a living system, and even though he asserts that this “externally held information” (not in our DNA) is nothing new, I still find myself terrified.

But that’s not the problem. We are all undeniably swimming in and under this Panthalassa of bytes of data, and some of that data will be harvested and used for purposes good and ill. However, schools should not be collecting student information for use by other entities. And they are.

Attendance rates and test scores are easily identifiable examples of student information collected by schools. However, thanks in part to stressed resources, lots of schools have accepted the help of outside vendors in order to provide services that in a different universe might have been understood to be the natural province of the schools themselves. Not-for-profit organizations and specialists have set up shop on campuses all over the country and collect student information in a variety of ways including surveys and having kids fill out forms in order to participate in the vendor’s program. Much of this data is then shared under the rubric of “scholarship program” or “college outreach.” Don’t forget to check the box!

Even the laptops I passed out in class for our research project were little data dynamos. Of course, the district monitored every website visited by every student, but so did The Google. And no doubt so did Microsoft and Amazon. Every Yahoo News click was another bitbyte in some kid’s digital profile. I suppose someone could argue that everybody knows that everybody knows everything anyway, and that kids are savvy and experienced digital consumers and fully informed of the risks and exposure, but nobody says that about kids and drugs, and nobody who knows anything about kids would say that anyway.

No matter what, by permitting ancillary entities to occupy campuses and operate this way, and by distributing and utilizing our own technology without sufficient regard to the implications, schools effectively sanction these practices. And whether it’s browsing histories from school laptops, or household education, family size, and even income information though a “We’re here to help” not-for-profit, this covert data collection should be illegal and is just another example of why data is evil bullshit.

What am I supposed to do about it? Resist. Like with many of the institutional outrages described in this book, a teacher’s capacity to curb this abuse is limited.  However, I urge you to resist. Make sure your students are thoroughly informed of their options “Don’t check that box!” including their option to withhold their participation. Remind them that sharing their information, even for school, even on a school computer, has risks and help them protect themselves from those risks. Don’t be thinking years from now that you could and should have done more. Don’t be me.

We are collecting data on students, sometimes little kids, right now--data that will be attached to them forever. We are allowing district-affiliated tech platforms like Schoology and Naviance, and teacher favorites such as Google Classroom and ClassDojo and Kahoot!--and about a bazillion others--to collect student data. We utilize public platforms like Zoom and YouTube and TikTok, and every one of them tracks kids. Every administrator, every superintendent, every teacher knows it. We are complicit.

What choice do we have? we say to ourselves. Public schools are starved for resources. Education Technology companies offer "solutions." And besides, the kids like it. Yes, for the children. And finally: It doesn't matter anyway. The world is a digital matrix and we are our data. That may very well be true. But do schools have to be instruments of collection?  

Everyone knows that when it comes to Big Data, the consumer is the product. In schools, without asking or even honestly discussing it, we are selling our students. 

Data (scores from state-sponsored standardized tests) is bullshit. Part Three, part two

Are we there yet?

So, like I said, in my continuing education I've discovered a lot of people who can and have discussed and argued the pointlessness and destructiveness of the present testing regime. Their outstanding work includes academic studies and personal narratives and lots of stuff in between. I continue to work my way through them.

In the meantime, what can I offer? I can share my own experience and let readers decide what is similar and what is different to their own. I can talk to you and to other teachers like I've been there because I have. I know what you're going through because I went through it, and I came out the other side healthy, happy, and retired.

So here's one final, personal rant on data. I have other stuff to say, after all.

This, from Answer Key:

Data is bullshit, and professional developments about data are nuclear powered bullshit and tough to take without going completely insane. Besides all the philosophical reasons for opposing the toxic testing-industrial complex, and all the moral reasons for fighting against the reduction of human beings to data points, the numbers are phony. It’s all a fraud. The data do not mean what they say the data mean.

Now if you are tasked with administering these tests and you happen to be arithmophobic (an arithmophobiac?), you may not notice or want to, but the tests do not measure what they purport to. They are not reliable. They are not valid. First of all, if you’ve ever given a ten question multiple choice quiz to your students, you will know that even if you test exactly the same material again a week later, sometimes the same student will score higher and sometimes their score will go down. Shit, if you've ever taken an "ideal mate" quiz online--I almost wrote in a magazine, which tells you how old I am--you know that one day you'll wind up with Barack Obama and the next week you'll be yearning for Courtney Love.

And before you start sputtering about the difference between questions of preference vs. matters of fact, take a look at the questions students are asked on these exams--not that you're allowed to talk about them. There may be clear answers in algebra, but the relative strength or weakness of evidence, or of an opening sentence, or the interpretation of an extended metaphor are subjective and open to...well...interpretation.

Performance on a task including an examination depends on any number of factors including most recent experience, blood sugar level, and the quantity and intensity of available distractions. That is why no teacher worth the name would ever rely on a single assessment given a single time to evaluate a student in any significant way. We give tests, but we also give projects and writing assignments short and long, formal and informal. We assign debates, we listen to conversations and questions and we try to get a comprehensive, meaningful picture of what each student knows and can do along with some idea of what they need--particularly from us--in order to be able to know and do more.

In other words, it's the opposite of the testing-industrial imperative. And the opposite of what most people who are not teachers mean when they say "data."

And it’s even worse than that. In addition to not measuring what a student has learned, the tests don’t deliver even within their own narrow objectives. They do not measure what they say they do.

I’ll give you an example: My school hired a group of education consultants to boost our test scores. (Hilariously, we were not allowed to acknowledge that’s what we were doing.) We had days and days and days of meetings with these “experts”--only the math and English departments of course, because (sotto voce) That’s what we test. Meanwhile, everyone else could work on what they needed to do to prepare for actual teaching.

And when we were through with these literal weeks of PDs, we had created five exams to give in each class, one every five weeks and each test would assess five distinct standards representing five discrete skills. That’s five, then five weeks later a different five, then a different five, until we get to twenty-five. Why twenty-five? They’re the ones that occur most frequently on the Big Test in the spring.

And so, after each test we would look at how dismal our scores were and compare them to the previous test to see if they went up or down. In a PD about *data* we would assemble in the elementary cafeteria and show each other our dismal scores (our students’ scores) and make up a story about why our scores might have gone down or up, and we’d make posters and cut out student names and put up the posters around the cafeteria and go one-by-one around the room and tell our stories and answer for our sins. That is, those of us in the math and English departments. All others adjourn to your rooms to work on teaching stuff.

The tests were all different and tested different standards and skills. We were told we could not test the same things twice to see if we had made progress. We compared scores from different kinds of tests and had to pretend that the improvement or decline from one test to the next meant something. “Wow, those kids really got it this time.” “Oh (downward inflection), that’s disappointing. What did you do differently?” “I taught different stuff!” And we did this for years.

I tried several times during the early days of this catastrophe to point out that we were not actually measuring progress or the lack of it. “It’s apples to orangutans!” “Five answers to five questions is not a valid measure of proficiency!” “Who chose four correct answers as the benchmark for proficient? And why?” “Skills? Standards? I looked at the data and my student scores precisely tracked their reading levels. Aren’t we really just assessing their reading?” I was... unheard.

And there’s more. We were required to give the exam--in English--to every single student. Boost scores? Shhh! Yet we were required to prep for and administer the exams to seniors who would never be taking another test in high school. Our ELD teacher was forced to give the exam--in English--to newcomers to the U.S. who had been in country for a week and as yet spoke zero English. For these students and others, as for the teachers in their classrooms, the tests were a deliberate insult.

<snip>

To defend standardized testing, you are likely to hear some version of business management guru Peter Drucker’s assertion that “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” I once heard “We measure what we value,” which I thought was ridiculous because my students and I valued collaboration, humor, persistence, flexibility, and lots of other things depending on the day. None of these ever showed up on the standardized exams--not that I’m discussing what did show up because, of course, that would be breaking the oath they make us all sign to protect the market share and business model of testing companies. You might ask yourself why we are not allowed to discuss these top secret contents. Wouldn’t that help us better prepare our students? Wouldn’t it lead to better exams? Good questions all, but beside the point. And the point is profit.

What I found is that, far from measuring what we value, we instead assign value to the measurements themselves, as long as they can be readily obtained and easily expressed. The measurements are the point, not what they measure. The numbers are vital to a system that employs thousands and thousands of people who interpret the numbers, explain the numbers, compare the numbers, and thousands more who come to your school to tell you how bad your numbers are and what you should do to make them marginally less bad. All the while, mind you, not measuring what you value. They don’t care about what teachers value or what students value. This is what they value.

Do not fall for it. You may have to give the tests, but you do not have to believe in them. Do not adopt their self-serving framing that everything can and should be quantified. It can not. But when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Big money in nails.

I know you know this. I know you have a million stories just like this and much, much worse. I know that many of you are tortured by the knowledge that the relentless testing is preventing you from serving your students better. I know I was. You and I know that, regardless of advertising, testing is an insidious form of control that shifts power away from the classroom and limits what students learn and teachers teach. Testing is a crucial component in a weapons system armed and aimed directly at public education.  

But, and I know this is pretty rich coming from a retired guy, please please please please please please please don't give up. We all know that what is happening is wrong, but we don't yet know how to stop it. Still, your students need you, and I'm living proof that you can survive--at least for twenty-five years. If you are in a position to speak up, resist and push back, I urge you to do so. If you are not in that position yet, you will be if you stay long enough. 

I'm going to keep fighting and looking for ways to win. I'm going to shift gears from ranting to strategizing. If you have any brilliant ideas, please read this blog and comment here. Or contact me directly at nowwaid@gmail.com. 

For the time being, I'll be shifting another kind of gear as well. I began this joyride by announcing that I was retired and loving it. I think I even wrote that the best retirement advice you'll ever get is "As soon as possible." Well that's all still true, but it's a year now and it's time for me to do some real retirement stuff, so I'll be taking a road trip across the country and back. By camper van. Because that's what you do. 

I think I'm going to post about the trip a little, just to give a glimpse of the delight that waits for you on the other side. Over the rainbow. Please stay tuned and stay in the fight.

Hey! It's the weekend! Have a cocktail--or several. Turn your clocks forward and, when you do, remember that there will never be enough time to do everything you need to do. Start with the things you really want to do, and go from there. 

Data (scores from state-sponsored standardized tests) is bullshit. Part Three, part one

I've been advised that I need to broaden my vocabulary when it comes to data. "Bullshit" is imprecise and banal. I will strive to be better.

But first, two things: I have used "bullshit" because it perfectly reflects the bad faith with which test scores are put forward as accurate measures of student learning, and because I like the percussive "b."  It helps me forcefully convey my frustration and anger at this bad-faith waste of time and students' lives.  

Also, when I quote from Answer Key, I'll keep the bullshit in its original form.

When I talk about data I'm really talking about two categories of information. The first category is useful information. It's the kind that promotes rational decision-making and leads to effective action. It includes all kinds of stuff from miles-per-gallon to blood sugar levels to price per square foot. In schools, attendance, reading levels, numeracy, class size, number of credentialed teachers, these are useful data.

On the other hand, there's a lot of information out there that is not useful, either because it's inaccurate or because it doesn't mean what it pretends to mean, or because it doesn't lead to any action. This information is useless. It is often used to pretend something is true. I will call this fake information. 

For example, the drive from Los Angeles to New York is about six hundred miles and takes about two days. You don't want to start a trip thinking this is accurate or you might find yourself in Gallup, New Mexico, looking for the Empire State Building. Also, this:

Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?

Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.

Some inaccurate information is deliberately inaccurate. A lot of COVID disinformation is this and it's worse than not accurate. It's cynical, strategic, and potentially deadly. 

Second, sometimes information doesn't mean what you think it means. A lot of this is advertising, and a lot of it is deliberate sleight of hand. Colgate's famous 2007 ad "stating that 80% of dentists recommend their product" is one example. A reporter selecting the most expensive gas station on the planet to dramatically represent the price of gas is another. In some schools, a 100% graduation rate means not counting students who were "counseled into alternative settings." Charters are notorious for this. 

The third kind of fake information is useless because it either is not or cannot be used. One country has launched a nuclear strike which will destroy your city in eighteen minutes. There are things you can do with your eighteen minutes, but none of them will stop the missiles. 

Undoubtedly the worst, most evil type of fake information is that which is collected or generated with no intention of acting on it. Often it's generated for a reason other than the one advertised. This category was invented for state-sponsored standardized testing to which millions of k-12 students are subjected every year. 

Ask most people not in education why students are tested so much, and the first thing they're likely to say is either "To find out what they know" or "They're tested how much?" A lot of people think of testing like it's the good old days, you know, when you took a final to pass your class and an SAT to get into college. Sometimes, somewhere in there was a PSAT for practice. Each one of these tests had real stakes for the students taking them, and the big standardized ones were voluntary. It was a long time ago, but I think I recall taking my SAT on a Saturday. And I had to pay for it. 

That is no longer the testing environment in which we live. There are still final exams and final projects, and students usually feel connected to them because they are based on the work they've been doing in class and because the results will be reflected in their final grade.

In my school, the district required that we turn over school days and school staff to the administration of both the SAT, which was paid for by the district, and the PSAT, which was also paid for by the district and which we started administering in the eighth grade. There is a powerful equity argument for making the tests available, but eighth grade is just ridiculous. The school didn't know how to make a schedule when whole segments were testing in classrooms (we didn't have a common area big enough to hold the testers) while other students were changing classes.

That's just a start. Now come the state-sponsored standardized tests. I know I've posted this chart before, but it illustrates the second semester experience in California schools.

And for dessert, there are extra tests that schools are required to develop in order to practice for the other tests. In a "nice career, be a shame if something happened to it" way, the district offers administrators consultants and materials and programs to help raise test scores. The equation looks something like this:

stagnant test scores + consultants, materials, programs = more practice tests = stagnant test scores - time, resources

And then districts punish schools, their students, teachers, and administrators for "failure" to raise test scores by offering--you guessed it--more consultants, materials, and programs until finally one day, lots of people quit or get fired and the dance begins anew. It's the circle of Life in Schools.

And for what? If the point of all this was to improve instruction, this is certainly not the system we would construct. With state-sponsored standardized tests, there is no opportunity for meaningful analysis by classroom teachers and no comprehensive plan for addressing the issues raised (and I don't mean the predictable default position of "Fuck the teachers, let them figure it out.") However, and this is important, not only is the information produced by these state-sponsored exams effectively useless, the tests do not even measure what they say they measure. They do not show what the profiteers and hucksters and fanatical true-believers say they show.

In an earlier draft of this post I included a lengthy excerpt here from Answer Key talking about reliability and validity, but I don't feel like doing that anymore. As I've been educating myself on this issue--now that I'm no longer consumed by the day-to-day battle for classroom survival--I have discovered how many people have been fighting this fight for years, and it feels like anything I have to say has been said much better than I can, and said over and over.

My latest wake-up call in an ongoing series comes from Dr. Mitchell Robinson, associate professor and chair of music education, and coordinator of the music student teaching program at Michigan State University. And it comes via a paper he wrote in 2014 in which he writes powerfully and eloquently much of what I've been trying to say. A few relevant bits:

Perhaps the most pernicious trend that drives current education reform initiatives is the singular and sole reliance on data as evidence of student learning and teacher effectiveness (Berliner and Biddle 1995).

And, regarding "stack ranking," a system of "dividing employees into arbitrarily predetermined 'effectiveness categories,' based on ratings by managers" (sound familiar?):

The main problem with using stack-ranking systems in teacher evaluation is that the approach is predicated on a series of faulty assumptions. Proponents of this approach believe that:

• teachers are the most important factors influencing student achievement,
• effective teaching can be measured by student test scores and is devoid of context,
• large numbers of American teachers are unqualified, lazy, or simply ineffective, and
• if we can remove these individuals from the work-force, student test scores will improve. (Amrein-Beardsley 2014, 84–88)

The argument is seductively convincing. There is, however, little to no research-based evidence to support any of these assumptions.

Robinson goes on to dispute each one of these assumptions, and I encourage you to read the whole paper, but I do want to include one example, as I don't think I have yet ranted about this specific defect in the current testing/accountability model. On child poverty, from the paper:

Similarly, much of the rhetoric surrounding the so-called “teacher effect” not only ignores the role of poverty in student learning, but actively dismisses this concern.

<snip>

Again, the research here is abundantly clear. When results are controlled for the influences of poverty, nearly every international test of student learning shows that American students score at the top of the rankings. For example, when test scores for U..S students on the 2009 Program for International Assessment (PISA) exams were disaggregated by poverty levels, American children from middle– and upper–socioeconomic status families per-formed as well or better than students from the top three nations in the rankings: Canada, Finland, and South Korea(Walker 2013a).

It occurs to me that I have very little to add to what Dr. Robinson, Diane Ravitch, Peter Greene at Forbes, Bob Shepherd (and here), Jan Resseger, Dennis Shirley, the people at FairTest, and many, many others have said better than I ever could, and they've been saying it for a long time. I want to acknowledge authors whose books I haven't even had time to read yet because I was, you know, teaching--authors such as Alfie Kohn; Anya Kamenetz; Daniel Koretz; Peter Sacks; Harris, Smith, and Harris; David Hursh; and Arlo Kempf, and others who have done the hard work and heavy lifting to make the case against testing in the face of intense opposition. In fact, the argument has been made, and the argument has been won. So what's the trouble?

It's impossible to get someone to understand something 
if their paycheck depends on their not understanding it. 

The trouble isn't that we don't know. The trouble is that we won't do. 

Time for a change. As I continue my education, I'm going to try and shift from ranting about something we all know to talking about what we can do about it. We just got a new boss in LAUSD, and I don't think the best argument is going to be enough. What are some real strategies for putting an end to this madness?

First, however, I do have one other thing to offer: my own experience. Next time I'll do a last post on data and then let it go for a while. I have other stuff to say, after all.

Next time:  Data (scores from state-sponsored standardized tests) is bullshit. Part Three, part two