John Merrow to America's Teachers: Trust Vulture Philanthropy

John Merrow will reliably parrot any corporate education scheme whose promoters will give him a spot on the stage from which to do so in a way that makes whatever fool notion he is being paid to hawk seem like his own.  From a recent self-promoting ad that introduces one of his info-tisement post at HuffPo:

Two quick notes before we blog: I'll be appearing live in conversation with Dave Levin of KIPP and Eva Moskowitz of Harlem Success Academy. This event, a discussion about the charter movement, will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 21 in NYC. If you can make it, we'd love to see you there. Tickets are going fast -- so get yours here.

And as always, remember that my February 2011 book The Influence of Teachers is for sale at Amazon.

The post goes on to promote a new educators' "faith" in technology in order to solve the cheating problem that, as predicted by social scientists, has metastisized in the high-stakes testing arena.  Predictably, too, Merrow's faith is not in educators or educational research to develop solutions for this problem, but in corporate America--specifically, the corrupt money-laundering outfit, the New Schools Venture Fund, which turns dirty corporate dough into tax breaks from vulture philanthropists:

But the best candidate might be the New Schools Venture Fund, who I think are the brightest folks on the block. That organization has never been shy about taking chances, probably because it exemplifies the spirit of its founder, John Doerr. In the Venture Capitalist world, only a small percentage of investments hit a home run, and the NSVF gets that. It's putting dollars behind a number of new approaches to teacher training, for example, in the expectation that some of them will be a distinct improvement on the current approach -- while others will fall short.

(I don't know how NSVF finances work, but maybe Apple, McGraw-Hill, et alia should be making large donations to that organization?)

Really, John?  You don't know how the finances work and you can't offer any specifics on programs supported by NSVF, and yet you recommend that CEOs wash away their tax obligations through this outfit in the name of educational innovation for teacher training?  Hmm.

The New Schools Venture Fund, Mr. Merrow, would like to clone the anti-teacher preparation program recently approved in New York that uses student score gains by teacher interns to determine if a student will get a teaching credential.  It's called the Relay School of Education, and it is an abomination to the idea of professional education for teacher candidates.  Here, John, is the list of Relay partners, all of which are dedicated to the total compliance segregated chain gang model for urban education:

Founding Partners

A non-profit organization that starts and manages outstanding urban charter public schools which close the achievement gap and prepare low-income students to graduate from college. Uncommon builds uncommonly great schools by developing and managing philosophically aligned, highly accountable, and geographically linked networks. Uncommon Schools currently manages 24 schools in Newark, New York City, Boston, Rochester, and Troy.

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A national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools with a track record of preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life. There are currently 109 KIPP schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia serving more than 32,000 students. In New York City, KIPP operates seven schools that serve over 1,700 students.

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A high-performing non-profit charter school management organization that operates a growing network of public schools in Connecticut and New York focused on providing students with the academic and character skills they need to achieve at high levels, graduate from college and become leaders in their communities.

Collaborators

The national corps of outstanding recent college graduates who commit two years to teaching in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in expanding educational opportunity.

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A national non-profit organization dedicated to closing the achievement gap by ensuring that high-need students get outstanding teachers. Founded by teachers in 1997, the organization partners with school districts and states to implement scalable responses to their most acute teacher quality challenges. Since its inception, The New Teacher Project has trained or hired approximately 43,000 teachers, benefiting an estimated 7 million students nationwide.

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A non-profit organization that partners with middle schools to expand the learning day for children in low-income communities across the country. By drawing thousands more citizens into schools each year, the organization is promoting student achievement, transforming schools, and re-imagining education in America.

Investors

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, Washington, the foundation is led by CEO Jeff Raikes and Co-chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

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The Carnegie Corporation strives to enable all students, including historically underserved populations and immigrants, to achieve academic success and perform with high levels of creative, scientific, and technological knowledge and skill. Current priorities include upgrading the standards and assessments that guide student learning, improving teaching and ensuring that effective teachers are well deployed in our nation's schools, and promoting innovative new school and system designs.

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Credit Suisse Americas Foundation’s goal is to impact students in local communities by supporting projects that represent vital educational initiatives. Based on the belief that successful philanthropy must be focused and measurable in order to achieve meaningful outcomes, the foundation concentrates exclusively on two specific areas: (1) Investing in schools that represent materially better alternatives for students; and (2) Investing in human capital to aid the recruitment and retention of effective teachers and school leaders.

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JPMorgan Chase's philanthropic goal is to be a catalyst for meaningful, positive and sustainable change within its highest-need neighborhoods and communities across the globe. In 2010, JPMorgan Chase and its Foundation gave more than $150 million through grants and sponsorships to thousands of not-for-profit organizations across 28 domestic markets and 25+ countries abroad.

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NSVF is a national non-profit venture philanthropy firm working to close the achievement gap by identifying and funding education entrepreneurs, and partnering with them to grow their organizations and increase their impact so that all children have the opportunity to succeed in college and beyond. Since its founding in 1998, NewSchools has invested $180 million in more than 40 nonprofit and for-profit organizations working to promote student achievement.

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Robin Hood's mission is to fight poverty in New York City. To accomplish this, the foundation finds, funds, and cultivates programs that prove they are most effective at making a positive impact on the lives of our neighbors in need. The foundation employs a rigorous system of metrics and third-party evaluation to ensure grantee accountability. The board pays all administrative and fundraising costs, so 100 percent of donations goes directly to helping New Yorkers in need build better lives.

John Merrow Takes the Road Most Traveled, By Corporate Charter Advocates

John Merrow is better served when he sticks to putting the best news face possible on corporate education reform atrocities, all in the name of fair and balanced reporting. But he has a predictable habit of interjecting himself into educational debates that he feels he should know something about, even though his latest entry into the charter controversy shows once again that Mr. Merrow should take fewer naps and do some current reading in areas for which he obviously cares more about than he knows.

Merrow's latest commentary in Ed Week, "When Roads Diverge: Tracking the Charter Movement," shows Merrow doing a little backtracking, in fact, to a time in late summer 2009, before Caroline Hoxby's shoddy charter "research" for Mike Bloomberg had been thoroughly discredited as an expensive advocacy piece by an expensive advocate. Merrow, in this commentary, offers us a celebration of the "gold standard" that Hoxby might have brought to bear on the charter question, had she not been compelled to distort, manipulate, exaggerate, and extrapolate her findings to fit her commission. And the small issue of the Hoxby "study" never receiving peer review before becoming the gospel according to Eli Broad and the corporate press? No problem, for Merrow had lunch with Caroline, and she assured him the peer review would happen soon. Which it already has, but which Merrow never mentions for fear of damaging his own variety of George Babbitt boosterism that drives this pro-charter screed to its illogical conclusion.

If Merrow had written all this out of ignorance, I could look the other way. After all, it is common practice for education writers to go for a couple of months without reading anything about the subjects they report on. But it is in the way that Merrow abuses the PDK/Gallup findings that convinces me clearly he has a few things to teach even the most polished propagandist like Caroline Hoxby. From Merrow:

The general public clearly wants more charter schools—64 percent in the 2009 Gallup poll on education. And a 2009 survey conducted by Education Next reports that more than a third of public school teachers support charters, a number that jumps to nearly half when respondents are told of President Obama’s support.

First off, if I wanted to know what teachers think, I would not go to Education Next, which is sponsored by the union busters at the sludge tank, the Hoover Institute. Secondly, there are no teacher questions in the survey that is connected by Merrow's link. Thirdly and most importantly, Kappan/Gallup poll did not ask the public if they "want more charter schools." The question actually asks, "do you favor or oppose the idea of charter schools:"

TABLE 11. As you may know, charter schools operate under a charter or contract that frees them from many of the state regulations imposed on public schools and permits them to operate independently. Do you favor or oppose the idea of charter schools?

Quite a different question, wouldn't you say, Mr. Merrow?

Ravitch on NCLB Failure and Privatization Dangers

When the corporate oligarchs have gone too far for even conservatives like Diane Ravitch (great facelift, Diane!), you know that the bad has gotten ugly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration doesn't seem to care that it has ostracized the left, the right, and the middle on education, preferring as it does to feed the corporate position.

If the handing over of public education to be wrecked and sucked dry by the philanthro-capitalists was intended as an olive branch to the Borg by Obama, it has only served to whet its appetite, as the current corporate-sponsored mercenary grassroots campaign now shows with the shutting down of public debate on healthcare by goon squads paid by insurance lobbyists.

Note at the end of the following Merrow interview that Dr. Ravitch seems clueless as to why Obama would be following this path to the destruction of public schools--when, in fact, these billionaire dictators of policy are the same Business Roundtable idiots that Ravitch has worked for for years, until they decided to ban all people who read books, including her. If Eli Broad had a job for her, rather than disdain, I wonder if she could afford to be so candid. From John Merrow's blog, an interview:

The Obama Administration and nearly every state have now endorsed national or common standards. Is this a good thing? Or is now the time to get worried, the logic being that, when ‘everyone’ is for something, the rest of us should watch out?

I have favored common standards for a long time. When I worked for Bush I in the early 1990s, I helped to launch federally funded projects to develop voluntary national standards in the arts, English, history, geography, civics, economics, science, and other essential school subjects. Some of the projects were successful; others were not. The whole enterprise foundered because a) it was not authorized by Congress, and b) it came to fruition during the transition between two administrations and had no oversight, no process of review and improvement. So, yes, I believe the concept is important.

However, I worry about today’s undertaking, first, because it will focus only on reading and mathematics, nothing else; and second, because I don’t know whether the effort will become a bureaucratic nightmare. But I won’t prejudge the outcome. I will hope for the best, and hope that today’s standardistas learned some lessons from what happened nearly two decades ago.

If we have common standards, are national tests likely to follow?

Not necessarily. If the standards are worthy, then any testing organization should be able to develop test specifications that are aligned with the standards.

On balance, has No Child Left Behind done more harm than good?

I would say, sorrowfully, that NCLB has failed. It did nothing to raise standards, because it left decisions about standards to the states. So many states have very low standards and yet announce that more and more students are “proficient,” as defined by that state.

We know from the National Assessment of Educational Progress that actual improvement has been very small over these past seven years, and in some ca ses, the rate of improvement has been less in these past seven years than in the years preceding the passage of NCLB. In the meantime, schools have become test-obsessed in a way that is not conducive to good education. Many schools and districts and states have learned how to game the system, and they are producing higher scores (by lowering the passing mark—or cut score—on their tests) that do not represent genuine improvement in learning. The amount of test-preparation now going on in the schools has a tendency to inflate test scores and even to invalidate the tests.

What’s the biggest downside of NCLB?

The biggest downside of NCLB is that it has promoted false, anti-educational values. Certainly high test scores are better than low test scores, but that is not all that matters in education. What about science, the arts, history, literature, foreign languages? My hunch is that NCLB is doing nothing to reverse the dumbing down of our children and our society, and may even be accelerating it.

The greatest benefit?

The greatest benefit of NCLB is that it has promoted concern for the lowest performing students and for narrowing the achievement gap among students of different racial groups. At least, that is the rhetorical benefit. But once again, if we examine the changes in the achievement gaps over time, we find that more progress was made in the years preceding NCLB than in the years since it was passed.

I remember your saying in an interview years ago that you favored public schools but not the public school system that we have. In New Orleans Paul Vallas has called for ‘a system of schools, not a school system.’ What’s your ideal approach? Are we moving in that direction?

If “a system of schools” means that the public schools should be handed over to anyone who wants to run a school, then I think we are headed in the wrong direction. Privatization will not help us achieve our goals. We know from the recent CREDO study at Stanford that charter schools run the gamut from excellent to abysmal, and many studies have found that charters, on average, produce no better results than the regular public schools. Deregulation nearly destroyed our economy in the past decade, and we better be careful that we don’t destroy our public schools too.

At some point, we will have to get the kind of leadership that can figure out how to improve our public school system so that we have the education we want for our children.

Recently the Obama administration announced the regulations for its $5 billion “Race to the Top” fund. That’s an unprecedented amount of discretionary money. How much was available when you worked in the first Bush Administration?

When I worked at the Department of Education in 1991, we had $10 million in discretionary funds, not $4.3 billion.

He’s using the money to push states in certain directions: lots more charter schools; lots more privatization; evaluate teach ers based on the test scores of their students; open more alternate routes into teaching to break the grip of professionalism. What’s your reaction?

I find myself agreeing with Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who wrote on Gadfly that this “Race to the Top” program should be called “NCLB 2: The Carrot That Feels Like a Stick.” As a former Bush administration official, he knows what he’s talking about. He likes the Duncan plans, but can’t resist shedding a tear for the death of federalism. Now, says Petrilli, we have entered fully into the age of “Washington Knows Best at its worst.” He writes: “If you found No Child Left Behind prescriptive, just wait till you take a look at this baby.”

To me, the problem here is obvious: What if Washington doesn’t know best? What if the “reform” ideas are wrong? As I said before, the CREDO study at Stanford—which looked at performance in half the nation’s charters–found that 80% or more of charter schools are no better than or worse than their neighborhood public school. Why replace struggling public schools with worse charter schools? There is a ton of evidence that evaluating teachers based solely on student test scores is a bad idea (see the work of Jesse Rothstein at Princeton, for example). Test scores over at least three years should be part of the calculation, but only part of it.

Tell me more.

Sure. If Arne Duncan knows exactly how to reform American education, why didn’t he reform Chicago’s schools? A report came out a couple of weeks ago from the Civic Committee of Chicago (”Still Left Behind”) saying that Chicago’s much-touted score gains in the past several years were phony, that they were generated after the state lowered the passing mark on the state tests, that the purported gains did not show up on the federal tests, and that Chicago’s high schools are still failing. On the respected federal test (NAEP), Chicago continues to be one of the lowest performing cities in the nation.

I want to know why Washington is pushing “reform” ideas that have so little evidence behind them, ideas that might do serious damage to public education in America?