Duncan's BTTF (Bribe To The Flop)

Since last Fall Bush and Obama have handed over 3 trillion dollars (give or take a few hundred billion) in taxpayer money to save American business from the ruin that corporate greed and profligate behavior would have otherwise guaranteed the entire country, except for those with foreign bank accounts, of course.

In comparison, 2.5 percent of that $3 trillion, or $100 billion, went to the education bailout, and a sliver of that $100 billion (4.3% of it) has been given to the Secretary of Education to "incent" states to change their laws so that they will be in line with the Broad/Gates corporate education reform based on paying teachers for test scores, creating mammoth data surveillance systems, opening up the floodgates to "alternative" teacher preparation programs such as ABCTE and TFA (for the urban and rural poor), and expanding corporate charter chain gang schools to become the dominant model for schooling in urban America.

Even though the Dunc has been hawking the BTTF for months now, the President, himself, was on the road yesterday in Wisconsin to announce the race has really started now. Ready, set, yawn.

Not only is no one excited, but most believe that none of 4.3 percent of the 2.5% of the corporate bailout will improve education or close the achievement gap or accomplish any of the blah-blah about competitive global economies. What it will likely do is continue shrinking school curriculums into the box built by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, weaken the teaching profession and teacher unions, make test scores even more high stakes and certainly more high profit, and solidify the education industry as the dominant voice for urban school matters in America. That's pretty good bang for your buck, or some excellent leveraging, as Bill and Eli might chuckle.

And all of it is going full steam ahead despite what the preponderance of evidence tells us about these proposals.

• For instance, the only peer-reviewed large-scale study of charter schools,

for example, a 14 state study out of a Stanford research center reported that 17% of charters did better than public schools, while 37% did worse. The reason that charters do no better, and frequently do worse, than public schools is that they do not provide the promised innovations, have higher turnover and less qualified staff. Also clearly emerging from the findings is that charter schools segregate by wealth and race. It is troublesome that our leaders who promised to be "evidence-based" have not based their initiatives on the evidence.

• A study of performance pay in Texas reported yesterday in the Dallas Morning News found this:

For the $300 million spent on merit pay for teachers over the last three years, Texas was hoping for a big boost in student achievement.

But it didn't happen with the now-defunct program, according to experts hired by the state.

The Texas Educator Excellence Grant, or TEEG, plan did not produce the academic improvements that proponents – including Gov. Rick Perry – hoped for when the program was launched with much fanfare in 2006, a new report from the National Center on Performance Incentives said.

"There is no systematic evidence that TEEG had an impact on student achievement gains," said researchers for Texas A&M University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Missouri.. . . .

• This comes four weeks after the National Academy of Science's National Research Council offered this warning in the Press Release to their Report regarding Duncan's pay-per-score plan:

Evaluations must be appropriate to the specific program being assessed and will be easier to design if grantees provide a "theory of action" for any proposed reform -- a logical chain of reasoning explaining how the innovation will lead to improved student learning. Evaluations should be designed before programs begin so baseline data can be collected; they should also provide short-term feedback to aid midcourse adjustments and long-term data to judge the program's impact. While standardized tests are helpful in measuring a reform's effects, evaluations should rely on multiple indicators of what students know and can do, not just a single test score, the report adds.

. . . .

One way of evaluating teachers, currently the subject of intense interest and research, are value-added approaches, which typically compare a student's scores going into a grade with his or her scores coming out of it, in order to assess how much "value" a year with a particular teacher added to the student's educational experience. The report expresses concern that the department's proposed regulations place excessive emphasis on value-added approaches. Too little research has been done on these methods' validity to base high-stakes decisions about teachers on them. A student's scores may be affected by many factors other than a teacher -- his or her motivation, for example, or the amount of parental support -- and value-added techniques have not yet found a good way to account for these other elements.

• And alternative certification to add an unending suply of cheaper script readers in the urban schools that need the most experienced and qualified teachers? A study by Mathematica, commissioned by the bogus take-a-test-to-teach outfit, ABCTE, found an increasing supply of incompetents that Jeb's boys in Florida are turning loose on the poor and the disenfranchised in Florida schools. The leafy, er, the palm frond suburbs? They will not look at an ABCTE "certified teacher," and for good reason. From the Mathematica report out in September 2009:

Using data on 30 ABCTE teachers in Florida over two years, we found no differences in student gains in reading between students of ABCTE and non–ABCTE teachers. However, students of ABCTE teachers scored lower than their counterparts on the state math test. The difference was equal to an effect size of 0.25 and was statistically significant [approximately 10 percentage points], although the estimate varied slightly depending on how the matching was conducted and how the statistical model was specified. Limiting the sample to subgroups of teachers, such as novices or ABCTE teachers who scored high or low on certification exams (and their matched counterparts), did not change the overall conclusion either (p. 1).

This is just a sampling of the hard data that should give pause to Duncan and Obama's capitulation to the corporate ed reform oligarchs, whose ideological agendas are driving education policy, evidence be damned. The question faced by states: is it worth it to jeopardize public schools for what amounts to chump change, just to expand the education industry and to create a new unaccountable and unregulated corporate bureaucracy to be in charge of the children we have essentially thrown away?

Arizona now has corporate prisons to house poor adult lawbreakers. Will nationalized corporate chain gang schools be the cheap solution to urban and rural poverty among those too young for prison?

ABCTE and the Dissembling Hacks and Plagiarizers They Employ (With Your Money)

During most months when ABCTE is running its Special Offers for 150 bucks off their bogus teaching credentials, anyone with a bachelors degree can sign up for $500 to take a test to become a teacher. With the millions of dollars poured into this venture by the U. S. Department of Education, it is the best hope that the enemies of teacher professionalism have of achieving Reid Lyon's dream of blowing up legitimate teacher preparation programs. So far ABCTE's propaganda machine has pushed their way into 5 states as a route to being a "highly-qualified teacher." All with the blessing and sanction of the Bush-whacked U. S. Department of Education. And now Missouri is their target.

It is not often that I come across something on the Web that make me gasp, but today, quite unexpectedly, it happened. Actually, I gasped twice.

I came across this piece of dreck from retired ed psych professor, George Cunningham, at a right-wing braintrust called the Education Consumers Foundation. In a brief offered up there, Cunningham purports to compare the anti-preparation of ABCTE with the highly-respected NBPTS, which at present represents the profession's best shot at a cross-borders type of national licensure for teachers. Most states pay extra to get teachers who have achieved National Board certification. And not only does Cunningham compare them, but he finds ABCTE superior to NBPTS! This is truly conservative ideology run amok.

In his brief, Distinguished Teacher Certification: National Board of Professional Teacher Standards (NBPTS) vs. American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), Cunningham cites two studies, one that found little difference in student test scores between NBPTS teachers and the rest of Florida teachers without NBPTS credentials. In the other study, Tennessee student test scores gains were compared between two other groups of teachers, one group of 13 teachers who passed the ABCTE tests and the other group of 42 teachers that did not pass the ABCTE tests.

And guess what--those teachers who failed the ABCTE tests had smaller gains than those who passed the ABCTE tests. Besides being too small to have any validity whatsoever, this second study compares two very different groups than the first study. Whereas the first study compares NBPTS teachers to the universe of other teachers in the state of Florida, the second study compares one group that we know has at least rudimentary teaching knowledge to one that does not. Even if the second study were valid, we might conclude that that those without rudimentary pedagogical knowledge or subject area knowledge, i.e., those who would fail ABCTE, are not as likely to be as successful in the classroom as those with rudimentary knowledge. Amazing.

Cunningham, nonetheless, concludes on the basis of his apples and dog do-do comparison, that ABCTE is far superior to NBPTS. Not only that, he goes on to mis-characterize the process of National Board certification. Heckuva job, George.

The ABCTE study that Cunningham cites has other difficulties, too. The study was supposedly produced by Joshua Boots, who owns his own bachelor's degree in secondary teaching, and who "manages all program research" for, who else, ABCTE. One may add that he manages to massage research there, too, having plagiarized (gasp # 2) an earlier published study, Student Achievement and Passport to Teaching Certification in Elementary Education, by ABCTE (May 2006) (download pdf) and presented it as his own in 2007 at the AERA National Conference in Chicago. Boots did manage to change a few things in the paper, including one word of the title:

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND ABCTE PASSPORT TO TEACHING CERTIFICATION
IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION


2007 AERA NATIONAL CONFERENCE
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS



JOSHUA BOOTS
AMERICAN BOARD FOR CERTIFICATION OF TEACHER EXCELLENCE

Here are a few other examples of Boots's plagiarism, beginning with the Abstract that rips off the Executive Summary of the earlier study:

Example #1

The mission of the ABCTE is to develop and provide an effective and efficient teacher certification process that enhances teacher quality. Passport to Teaching is the national teacher certification program offered by ABCTE. Currently, certifications are available in elementary education (K–6), English/language arts (6–12), mathematics (6–12), general science (6–12), biology (6–12), physics (6-12), chemistry (6-12) and special education (K–12). ABCTE also offers a reading endorsement for certified elementary education teachers (Boots, p. 1)

Compare to--

A vital function of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence is to develop and provide an effective and efficient teacher certification process that enhances teacher quality. Passport to Teaching is the national teacher certification program offered by ABCTE. Currently, certifications are available in elementary education (K–6), English (6–12), mathematics (6–12), general science (6–12), biology (6–12), special education (K–12), physics (6-12) and chemistry (6-12). ABCTE also offers a reading endorsement for certified elementary education teachers (ABCTE, p. 5).

Example # 2

All candidates for Passport to Teaching certification must hold a bachelor’s degree and demonstrate mastery on rigorous examinations of subject area and professional teaching knowledge. Prior to earning certification, candidates must also pass a federal background check.

Passport to Teaching is a four-step process that offers individualized preparation:
1. Candidates enroll in Passport to Teaching.

2. Candidates complete an online Self-Assessment survey to identify strengths and weaknesses in their teaching and content knowledge. Based on the Self-Assessment, certification candidates work with an experienced teacher (Learning Plan Advisor) to develop an Individualized Learning Plan. This plan recommends materials and resources to prepare the candidate for certification. Candidates are not required to take additional college courses, but may choose to do so for preparation purposes. (Individuals seeking Pennsylvania certification will be required to complete additional coursework).

3. To earn the Passport to Teaching certification, candidates must demonstrate mastery on the computer-based examinations. Each exam has a single national cut scores. The assessments are administered at secure testing centers located throughout the world, and must be completed within one year of enrollment.

With a Passport to Teaching certificate, successful candidates can apply for a teaching license in the states of Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Utah. ABCTE is also actively working to earn recognition for Passport to Teaching in other states. After earning the Passport to Teaching, teachers are eligible to participate in ABCTE’s mentoring program. (Boots, p. 2)

Compared to--

All candidates for Passport to Teaching certification must hold a bachelor’s degree and demonstrate mastery on rigorous examinations of subject area and professional teaching knowledge. Prior to earning certification, candidates must also pass a federal background check.

Passport to Teaching is a four-step process that offers individualized preparation.
1. Candidates enroll in Passport to Teaching.
2. Candidates complete an online Self-Assessment survey to identify strengths and weaknesses in their teaching and content knowledge. Based on the Self-Assessment,
certification candidates work with an experienced teacher (Learning Plan Advisor) to develop an Individualized Learning Plan. This plan recommends materials and
resources to prepare the candidate for certification. Candidates are not required to take additional college courses but may choose to do so for preparation purposes. (Individuals seeking Pennsylvania certification will be required to complete additional coursework.)

3. To earn the Passport to Teaching certification, candidates must demonstrate mastery on computer-based examinations. The examinations are a nationally recognized measure of excellence. The assessments are administered at secure testing centers located throughout
the world and must be completed within one year of enrollment.

4. With a Passport to Teaching certificate, successful candidates can apply for a teaching license in the states of Florida, Idaho, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Utah. ABCTE is also actively working to earn recognition for Passport to Teaching in other states. After earning the Passport to Teaching, teachers are eligible to participate in ABCTE’s mentoring program. (ABCTE, p. 2)

Example #3

Study Findings
The analysis contrasts all self-contained elementary classroom teachers whose examination scores would qualify them for ABCTE certification with those who would not receive certification. To pass, ABCTE candidates must demonstrate proficiency on both the Professional Teaching Knowledge (PTK) exam and the Multiple Subject Exam (MSE).

The 13 teachers scoring at the proficient level on both certification examinations, therefore meeting the certification criteria, are referred to as “passing” teachers. The other 42 teachers failing one or both of the examinations, therefore not meeting the certification qualifications, are referred to as “failing” teachers.

Overall improvement in student’s achievement is a combined average of student performance in all four subject areas tested by Tennessee. Students of passing teachers made positive gains in relation to their peers, while students of failing teachers did not make as much progress. The difference in student achievement between passing and failing teachers is a 1.04 NCE gain advantage for students of passing teachers (significant to the p<.05 level.) Teachers who met the ABCTE certification requirements for elementary education produced greater academic achievement from their students than teachers who did not meet the requirements. The greatest difference in student learning gains by individual subject area was in mathematics; passing teachers’ students had a 2.38 NCE gain advantage (significant to the p<.01 level). In addition, the students of passing teachers showed higher learning gains in science and social studies. The average learning gains of the students of passing teachers were all above zero, indicating that passing teachers’ students exceeded one year’s progress in all subjects. Except in reading, failing teachers’ students made less than one year of progress, compared with their peers. The difference in NCE gains between passing and failing teachers approached statistical significance but only mathematics was small enough to report (Boots, pp. 8-9)

Compared to--

The analysis contrasts all self-contained elementary classroom teachers whose examination scores would qualify them for ABCTE certification with those who would not receive certification. This is the comparison of interest for policymakers wanting to use the Passport to Teaching credential as an indication of elementary teacher quality. To pass, ABCTE candidates must demonstrate proficiency on both the Professional Teaching Knowledge (PTK) exam and the Multiple Subject Exam (MSE).

The 13 teachers scoring at the proficient level on both certification examinations, therefore meeting the certification criteria, are referred to as “passing” teachers. The other 42 teachers, failing one or both of the examinations and, therefore, not meeting the certification qualifications, are referred to as “failing” teachers.

Students of passing teachers had substantial overall improvement in achievement, compared with students of failing teachers. Passing teachers also had positive student learning gains in each subject area, while failing teachers showed below-average student learning gains in every subject area except reading (see Table 1). This suggests that ABCTE certification in elementary education is a valid indicator of teacher effectiveness in a self-contained classroom.

Overall improvement in students’ achievement is a combined average of student performance in all four subject areas tested by Tennessee. Students of passing teachers made positive gains in relation to their peers, while students of failing teachers did not make as much progress. The difference in student achievement between passing and failing teachers is a statistically significant 1.04 NCE gain advantage for students of passing teachers. (Statistical significance is based on results from a two-tailed t-test.)

Teachers who met the ABCTE certification requirements for elementary education produced greater academic achievement from their students than teachers who did not meet the requirements. The greatest difference in student learning gains by individual subject area was in mathematics; passing teachers’ students had a statistically significant 2.38 NCE gain advantage. In addition, the students of passing teachers showed higher learning gains in science and social studies.

The average learning gains of the students of passing teachers were all above zero, indicating that passing teachers’ students exceeded one year’s progress in all subjects. Except in reading, failing teachers’ students made less than one year of progress, compared with their peers (ABCTE, p. 8).

Not only did Boots plagiarize, but he misrepresents other research that he cites. Just one example, here, where Boots cites a study commissioned by ABCTE, which is based on surveys with principals whose experience with ABCTE teachers amounted to exactly one teacher each. And it cannot be argued that Boots was unfamiliar with the research he cites, for he was, in fact, the Project Officer of the Mathematica study he lies about. This is from p. 5 of Booth's plargiarized presentation paper at AERA:

Mathematica also surveyed principals of ABCTE-certified teachers in 2006 and found that, as a group, they were judged to be more effective than both first-year and all other teachers in all 11 areas of teacher effectiveness (Glazerman, Tuttle, and Baxter 2006).

Now here is what the study (download report (pdf)) actually says:

We found that principals typically rated Passport holders to be “as effective” as or “somewhat more effective” than “all other teachers [they had] observed in their career” on every dimension of job performance. A small number of Passport holders received low ratings (“much” or “somewhat” less effective), and a slightly larger number received “much more” effective ratings. Based on the ABCTE teachers they had supervised, principals were mixed on their appraisal of American Board certification, with the most common response that of uncertainty because of the limited experience with the program (typically just one teacher) (p. 3).

And here at left (click to enlarge) are the survey results (based on 39 teachers and 39 principals), which make the report text and Boots's exaggerations about the report even more ridiculous.

Any policymaker or politician looking to get the facts from this ABCTE outfit, or from any consulting group of retired hack professors representing them, should think twice and then again about how these "facts" may come back to bite them. These guys are out to supply the cheapest "teachers" to those who need the best teachers the most, while crushing the progress already made at teacher professionalism over the past 150 years.

Will Missouri Take a Leap Backwards on Teacher Quality?

I have posted a number of pieces here on ABCTE, that ED-sponsored effort to gut professional teacher preparation programs and the teaching profession by offering a de-skilled and de-professionalized version of teachers with a credential earned solely on the basis of having a Bachelors degree and passing a test. No teacher training, no methods courses, no student teaching.

If you doubt that ABCTE is aimed to bust the profession at any cost, read these linked posts above to see how then-Sec. Rod Paige approved ABCTE as a route to being "highly qualified" before ABCTE even had developed a single test. Ah, those were the days, weren't they! Well, they haven't gone away, I am afraid.

At a time when teachers are leaving the profession because they refuse to abuse children with constant testing while neglecting real learning, at a time when those teachers are leaving the profession in the greatest numbers from the poorest schools that need the best teachers the most, at a time when politicians give constant lip service to a living wage for teachers and extra incentives for the best teaching in the most challenging schools, will the Missouri House go along with Senate to align themselves with another Bush Administration pet project to eviscerate the teaching profession, while turning their backs on the children who need the most highly qualified teachers? All in the name of addressing a teacher shortage created by an NCLB steamroller that has pushed out those teachers who refuse to become test factory guards.

Will they approve a model of teacher non-training based on passing a Pearson-administered test and paying a fee? Will they tell poor parents that courses in child development, history of education, methods courses, student teaching, educational psychology, don't matter for teachers of their children? That their special needs child is taught by a teacher who became a special ed teacher by passing a test? Because surely if this scam passes the Missouri legislature, it will not be the parents of the middle class or the wealthy who get those teachers who become highly qualified by paying to pass a test.

Here is a link to a story from the Post-Dispatch by Lee Logan, who was punked, I'm afraid, by someone who told him that ABCTE requires applicants to complete methods courses and 60 hours of observation to get their miracle credential. Chris Bale, with ABCTE, assures me that this is not a requirement, so bring your $750.00 test fee and come on down!

JEFFERSON CITY — The Missouri Senate gave final approval to a bill that would make it easier for people to switch jobs to become teachers, after hours of debate Wednesday evening.

Sen. Joan Bray, D-University City, had been postponing a final vote on the bill, saying she feared it would lower the quality of the state's teachers.

"It's degrading to the teaching profession," Bray said. "We give up, as a state, our rights to determine the quality of our teachers in the system."

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Luann Ridgeway, R-Smithville, said the measure addressed a critical teacher shortage.. . .

GAO Investigates ABCTE

A closer look at the history of ABCTE reveals that my outrage at the shoveling of US DOE funds to neocon cronies of the White House has been shared by others. In October 2004, Rep. George Miller's office requested a GAO investigation of the awarding of US DOE contracts in ABCTE's $40 million dollar scam. In the same letter, Miller asks the GAO to investigate another shady deal involving America's leading virtuecrat, Bill Bennett. Bennett received over $4 million in US DOE money for his "online learning company" from NCLB’s Voluntary Public School Choice Program, which was not intended to support the private home schoolers that Bennett's company targets.

The story was reported by Stateline in December of last year, and Susan Ohanian printed both the Stateline story and Madigan's response here.

Wonder what the GAO found out?

"Scientifically-Based" Teacher Preparation?

"Scientifically-based research" has been the new mantra for federal education grants since passage of NCLB in late 2001. The phrase, "scientifically-based," is mentioned in the context of reading instruction, alone, nearly 50 times in NCLB. In 2002, Grover Whitehurst, the head of the Institute of Education Sciences and final arbiter for federal grant apps, testifed before a Senate Committee about the necessity for federal funding to be based upon scientific data: "Whitehurst explains that adherence to scientifically-based research will be a critical factor in the funding decisions and endorsement of programs that fall under the purview of NCLB."

In fact, any materials purchased by principals to meet NCLB testing requirements must be validated by "scientifically-based research" before Federal dollars can be spent. (The implications of this requirement will be discussed in subsequent posts.)
The US DOE has gone so far, in fact, to write into its rules and regs requirements now that all federally-funded research must be scientifically based (Fed. Register 1/25/05):

We take this action to focus Federal financial assistance on expanding the number of programs and projects Department-wide that are evaluated under rigorous scientifically-based research methods in accordance with the ESEA of 1965, as reauthorized by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

With all of this emphasis on science for Federal spending decisions, and with all the good research by Linda Darling-Hammond and other scholars that demonstrates the value of college teacher preparation for teacher candidates, one must wonder how the US DOE came to a decision to fund a reckless venture for teacher preparation that, 1) has no research to support it, scientific or otherwise, and 2) disregards all of the scientifically-based research that clearly shows teacher retention advantages and student learning advantage when teachers have been prepared to teach by university teacher education programs.

We are not likely to see a clearer domestic case of misappropriation of Federal monies, just as we are not likely to find a more hypocritical, cynical, and selective use of policy used to drive an ideological agenda aimed at the further weakening of public schools.

ABCTE Written into NCLB Legislation?

In poking around in the California's State website hoping to find out more on the fake credential story in the LA Times yesterday, I came across more interesting history on ABCTE, the sham operation designed to introduce "market forces" to teacher preparation. It seems the Dr. Kathleen Madigan, President of ABCTE has been pitching her goods in California as well. This report on Madigan's latest visit is from the State's website. It is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the self-reported claim that ABCTE was approved in NCLB before they ever offered their first Internet test to certify a teacher. From the California Commission for Teacher Certification (CCTC), August 2004:

PSC 4A-1
Update on the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) Passport to TeachingSM Certification Program

Introduction

In 2003, the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (American Board or ABCTE) began offering a standards based approach using individualized learning programs and set of rigorous examinations for potential teachers seeking a national level license. The Professional Teaching Knowledge exam and the Elementary Education exam were first administered in September 2003. The English Language Arts and Math content exams were administered in February 2004. ABCTE is recognized in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) as an approved provider (Title II, Part A, National Activities Section). Teacher candidates who meet ABCTE standards are considered "Highly Qualified" by the federal government. The information provided in this item briefly describes the four exams that the American Board developed and currently administers.

The next section is key, too. Here, Madigan provides more on the timeline as to when ABCTE (or what was planned to be ABCTE) landed its first $5 million from the Federal treasury. This is consistent with her claim that ABCTE was written into NCLB, because the date of the initial Dept. of Ed. grant was Sept. 2001, before final passage of the Act. Also pointed out here in the State's summary of Madigan's informative presentation is the fact that ABCTE sucked another $35 million dollars($35,000,000) in 2003 from the US Dept. of Education to continue its fake preparation of teacher candidates for another 5 years. Where could all this money be going? To improve teacher quality? Or to maintain a website and line the pockets of the education reform profiteers in Washington? More from Madigan's to the CCTC, August 2004:

History of the American Board

Created in 2001 through a partnership between the Education Leaders Council (ELC) and the National Council on Teacher Quality, the American Board was developed to create options in teacher certification.

The National Council on Teacher Quality received a $5 million dollar, two-year grant from the United States Department of Education's (USDOE) Fund for the Improvement of Education (September, 2001) for the purpose of creating the American Board. The American Board used a standards based approach to teacher certification including preparation resources, online advisors, and computer based teacher exams.

Passing scores were adopted for the Elementary Education (K-6), English (6-12), Mathematics (6-12) and the PTK exams in 2003. In 2003-04, the USDOE awarded the American Board an additional five-year, $35 million dollar grant. This grant is intended to "implement innovative teacher recruitment strategies, expand subject area certifications, develop preparation resources, create mentoring programs using technology and fully evaluate the effectiveness of this approach" (Test Development Process: Executive Summary, June 2004). At this time, federal funding is ABCTE's primary source of revenue.

Currently four states, Florida, Idaho, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania have considered and adopted the ABCTE Passport to TeachingSM as an alternative route to certification. The Florida State Board of Education and the New Hampshire State Board of Education voted in June 2004 to accept the American Board, Passport to TeachingSM as a new route to full certification for the state's public school teachers.

Florida, imagine that!

This part of the NCLB story is consistent with the other elements of the emerging travesty and tragedy that clearly show NCLB as the manufactured problem that would be solved by the testing/textbook industry and the corporate welfare artists on the MacSchool Boards of Directors and conservative think tanks with their self-published fake research. Their advisors, too, sit on "non-partisan" and "non-profit" Boards of the Education Leaders Council (is that Gene Hickok's name I see there!), the National Council on Teacher Quality (chaired by Andy Rotherham, is it?), and other professional-sounding hack outfits who sell their services to the testing-technological complex.

Is there a real education reporter out there interested in this story? Just one?

Highly Qualified Fake Teachers in Urban Areas

There is a story today in the LA Times about the fake credentialing that is going on in L.A. for teachers who work in poor urban schools. Apparently this is being done to circumvent the "highly-qualified" teacher requirements of NCLB.

These guys should have checked out a few Web sites--there are fake ways to become "highly-qualified" that are endorsed by the U. S. Department of Education. When the NCLB wizards included their demand for highly-qualified teachers in every school by 2005, they knew, of course, that their demand would create a big problem that would be solved by offering alternate routes for teacher certification. Falling short of the bombing that NICHD Director, Reid Lyon, wanted for the colleges of education, this cynical scheme offered a chance to have teacher candidates avoid the "liberal agenda of teacher education programs," while offering a chance for some of the White House's cronies in the ed biz to engage in some real education reform profiteering. The American Board for Certification of Teacher Education is one such opportunity for teacher candidates and uncertified teachers to become credentialed and certified without ever taking an education course.

ABCTE offers certification via Internet test-taking, which is handled by Pearson Education, a division of McGraw-Hill. Credentials are offered for beginning and “master” teachers, and neither credential requires any coursework in education. ABCTE requires a Bachelors Degree and $500 for the Internet test, and 100 dollar discount coupons are often available on the Web site.

The Back to Basics Redux crowd even got the Dept. of Education to provide grant money to help set up their venture, and they did something, who knows, to get verbal support by former Sec. Paige for ABCTE. In the DOE Secretary’s 2003 Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge (pdf), the Secretary enthused: “States could decide that individuals who pass the relevant sections of the American Board assessment would be considered fully certified to teach, regardless of where they learned the important knowledge and skills that were tested” (p. 5).

Did I say this outfit was started by by Eugene Hickok, Paige's Deputy Secretary, and other charter members of the Education Leaders Council. Hickok also happens to be a former Commissioner of Education for Pennsylvania, one of the four states that now accept ABCTE credentials to fulfill regular teacher certification requirements. Imagine that!

New and improved teachers?

The ABCTE is one of the preferred solutions of the "change everything" crowd now in power at the Dept. of Education. Somehow, a major in a subject area and passing an Internet test will create the "high quality" teachers called for in No Child Left Behind. Despite plenty of research to show that teacher education programs contribute significantly to new teacher success, the neo-cons would prefer, as former head of NIHCD blurped in 2002, “ to blow up colleges of education.”

Not only does the new education order want teacher candidates “protected from the ‘liberal agenda’ of teacher education programs” (Berliner, 2005), they also want a teacher corps without the bothersome and expensive headaches of collective bargaining units. In other words, they want to bust the NEA. This is part of a larger agenda to turn public schools into corporate welfare schools, or privately-managed charters, that take public education dollars and give them to corporations that hire and fire, make curriculum decisions, and give the tests.

Leaders in the charter movement such as Chester Finn have said as much: "What the charter designation does is create the opportunity to build such schools with less bureaucratic (and teacher union) hassle."

Who is Chester Finn? Among the many conservative causes and think tanks he participates in, is the ABCTE, where he sits on the Board of Directors. Such symmetry.

The revolution starts . . .now

The greatest problems facing schools today are linked to a national policy that hopes to "change everything," as former Deputy Secretary of Education, Gene Hickok recently noted in a speech to a group of charter school advocates and entrepeneurs in Florida.

This space will explore how that "everything" is already changing in public education and in policy circles and the public perception. Too, this space will advocate for a reexamination of the purposes of schools that is long overdue, before that "change," now spearheaded by a psychometric blitzkrieg of "metastasized testing" destroys a public education system that took almost 200 years to build.

Lastly, I hope to have some fun covering and uncovering the limitless supply of heartless stupidities against children and teachers and parents, all enacted to further the neverending cycles of what has come to be innocently known as "education reform." For starters, check out this site--it is the brainchild, or brainsomething, of the same Gene Hickok that began this post, and it is supported by the Dept. of Education as an alternative to those radical "diploma mills" that normally prepare teachers. Come one, come all--step right up and become a teacher today for 500 bucks. More on this later, much more.