Who Gave $184 Million to Hillsdale College in 2019-2020?

 Below is a clip from Hillsdale's 990 for the period ending June 2020:

Really? $184,000,000 in contributions and grants in one year to a small "liberal arts" college in a single year? Where, oh, where could all that money have come from?

We do know that the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity has an interest in Hillsdale's "classical" education model, as seen in this interview by AFP Foundation Florida's Lee Dury as he finds out more about Hillsdale's Barney Charter School Initiative from Hillsdale's Assistant Provost, Dr. Kathleen O'Toole. The money trail remains a mystery, however.

The same year that Hillsdale reported $184 million in contributions and grants on its 990, Governor Bill Lee traveled to Hillsdale to find out more about the Hillsdale Charter School Model. According to Hillsdale's President, Larry Arnn, Lee was so impressed that he asked Arnn to bring Tennessee some of that white Christian 19th Century book learning:

All of the classical schools with which we are involved, which number close to 50 now, pursue the aims in this Honor Code. There are wonderful citizens all over the country who have taken the lead in founding these schools alongside the College. Some of them are in public office, and here I single out Governor of Tennessee Bill Lee. About two years ago, he visited Hillsdale College to sit in my Aristotle seminar for two and a half hours and to learn more about our work with K-12 education. With the encouragement of the governor, we have undertaken to found several dozen schools in Tennessee alone. This is a mighty work. We will continue to help extend it everywhere.

Who sent Aristotelian Gov. Bill Lee to Michigan with an order for 50 new charter schools that Lee would like to place in TN public schools, rent free? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

TN's Bill Lee Plans $32 Million for White Christian Nationalist Charter Schools

 . . . [Hillsdale] College values the merit of each unique individual, rather than succumbing to the de-humanizing, discriminatory trend of so-called “social justice” and “multicultural diversity,” which judges individuals not as individuals, but as members of a group and which pits one group against other competing groups in divisive power struggles (Hillsdale College 2018-2019 Catalog, p. 15)

Located since 1853 in Hillsdale, Michigan, Hillsdale College (HC) is a small Christian liberal arts college (think Greek, Judeo-Christian, and American traditions almost exclusively) with just under 1,600 undergraduates.

On the Hillsdale College 2021 catalog page headed "Hillsdale College Faculty Statement On Academic Freedom," the page is heavy with references to the College's commitment to "ordered liberty" and "moral order." Though "ordered liberty" is never defined, context clues point me to conclude that faculty are free to practice academic freedom as long as it coincides with the dictates of an administration bound to uphold a politically-conservative view of Trump-approved Christian principles and a staunchly Spartan conception of ordered liberty:

Hillsdale College affirms that academic freedom is bound up with a valuable legacy of other freedoms and duties. Among these are the following aspects of ordered liberty to be considered with their related moral and social obligations: freedom of worship; freedom in work; freedom in politics; freedom in the economy.

Hillsdale College affirms that all these freedoms are dependent upon the maintenance of a moral order; and that academic freedom in particular requires attachment to a body of truth, made known through the order and integration of knowledge. Of such truths the College is the conservator and renewer, and the primary function of the College is to transmit, through these truths, some measure of wisdom and virtue.

In short, if you want your students to read Marx, rather than a Hillsdale-approved detractor, you'd better ask the President first. 

Back in the good old days when white patriarchy, unregulated capitalism, and scientific racism went unquestioned, Hillsdale College, which was given its name by Freewill Baptists in 1853, was free to run the lives of its students as Baptist clergymen saw fit. Male and female students, for instance, who wanted to walk together on campus during the 1850s, had to first seek permission from the College President or the Dean of Women to do so.

In some ways, though the upstart Hillsdale College in the early days was a progressive outlier.  Its founders were largely abolitionist teetotalers, and one faculty member was active in the formation of the Republican Party in 1853. More importantly, anyone, "irrespective of nation, color, or sex" could seek an education at Hillsdale. Many of its students fought for the Union Army during the Civil War, and Hillsdale was the first in Michigan and the second in the U. S. to “to admit women on an equality with men.”  

Today, enrollment numbers show pretty equal representation between women and men (just under 1,600 total), even though 90 percent of students enrolled in Hillsdale's only PhD program in Political Thought are men.

By the 1960s and 70s, however, any vestiges of progressivism were swept away when students at Hillsdale and elsewhere began receiving federal college assistance.  With federal aid came requirements for federal record keeeping and accountability, which Hillsdale refused to do when faced with the mandate to file reports required under Title IX.  

Hillsdale went to court, and in 1984 the College was handed a final defeat in the courts on the matter of federal reporting requirements. Having grown increasingly hostile to federal reporting requirements, the Trustees decided to cut ties with any federal funding, which included refusing student attendance when that attendance required students to pay their way with federal grants or loans.

You can imagine how this decision made Hillsdale's white student body even whiter. But we really don't know how white, unless we go there and do a head count, since HC does not report any racial or ethnic numbers publicly. (After a search through most of the web pages of HC's website, I could find zero photos of black or brown students, though I did see one Asian student).

In terms of faculty diversity, HC ranks 3,627 out of 3,790 American colleges, according to College Factual--which puts HC in the bottom 10 percent.

Today, the progressive outlier that was once Hillsdale has morphed into and defensive bastion of white right-wing Chritian activism.  Its early Republican founders who were largely abolitionists have been replaced by Goldwater, Nixon, and T---p era Republicans devoted to preserving white rights under the guise of liberty and freedom, which is essentially anti-government when government is involved in enforcing federal statutes and regulation in ways that chafe against the "freedom" to discriminate . 

Here is some representative rhetoric from HC's page, "Civil Rights in American History:"

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Rise of Affirmative Action

The understanding of civil rights in America has been transformed fundamentally since Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The view that every individual has a right to equal treatment under the law has been replaced by a system of affirmative action that demands race be taken into account in the pursuit of equal group outcomes.

Identity Politics Today

Identity politics holds that America is fundamentally and irredeemably racist. This ideology, which has become dominant in American public life, requires discrimination in order to elevate and privilege the identities of the oppressed.

To alleviate any doubt about the partisan nature of Hillsdale College's efforts to free itself from the bondage of federal mandates such as the Civil Rights Act, Title IX, ADA, U. S. Equal Employment, LGBT protections, etc., here is the latest affirmation of Hilldale's hostility to any such encumbrance.  Note that the Obama Administration is called out, specifically:

Resolution of the Board of Trustees

WHEREAS the Board of Trustees and Administration of Hillsdale College have been entrusted with, and are determined to uphold, the original and great principles and mission of the College as set down over 165 years ago by its founders; and

WHEREAS those principles and that mission require the College to provide “sound learning” to all willing students, and to do so in a way that perpetuates the “blessings of civil and religious liberty” and “intelligent
piety” in the land; and

WHEREAS the entanglement of the federal government in the financing of colleges and universities, and the consequent regulation of these institutions by federal agencies, violate the idea of limited government embodied in the Constitution; and

WHEREAS such violations are inherently corrupt, as seen in attempts of the Department of Education to compel Hillsdale College to count its students by race, in direct violation of the noblest principles of the College and of America; and

WHEREAS the Obama Administration and Congress today appear, even more than the worst of their predecessors, bent on extending federal control over American higher education and other areas of American life; now therefore be it

RESOLVED that Hillsdale College will continue zealously to defend and uphold, against all threats and inducements, its independence from federal government financing and federal government regulation; and be
it further

 
RESOLVED that the Administration of Hillsdale College, with the support of the Board of Trustees, will continue to provide not only the finest liberal arts education, but also national leadership in promoting the principles of liberty across the land, and to pursue these aims in strict avoidance of all subsidy from the federal taxpayer.

Now it is obviously difficult to square this high-sounding resolution, especially the last sentence, with the College's tax-exempt status, which relieves it from federal and state tax obligations on any of its net assets worth more than $1.25 billion. There's lots of dark money going to Hillsdale each year.

Hillsdale College's president is Larry Arnn, who was paid $1.2 million in salary and bonuses in 2019.  Arnn received his Masters and doctorate from Claremont Graduate School.  After being granted a PhD in 1985 from Claremont, he founded and served President of the right-wing Claremont Institute for the next 15 years. He remains a Trustee of the Heritage Foundation.

Hillsdale's resolve to pursue "strict avoidance of all subsidy from the federal taxpayer" is particularly puzzling, since Hillsdale is now providing the T_____-approved curriculum and instructional model for charter schools that could not exist without the public per-pupil expenditure that the Hillsdale Model charter schools receive.

Do you remember the 1776 Report, which was the work of T____'s 1776 Commission to attempt to undercut the 1619 Project?  The 1776 Report provided a partial K12 social studies curriculum that was meant as the whitest of whitewashes on the Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project, which had successfully spawned a K12 curriculum that includes the actual history of slavery in the story of America's past.  

Besides conservative ideology and a palpable animosity to cultural diversity, affirmative action, and social justice, what pedagogical expertise undergirds the 1776 Curriculum? And what is the connection to Hillsdale?  To the first question, we must answer, not much; to the second question, almost everything.  

T----'s Chairman for this 1776 Report was none other than Hillsdale President, Larry Arnn, who chose Carol Swain, retired right wing Vandy professor of law (think Clarence Thomas in a dress), as his Vice-Chair.  The Executive Director is Arnn's right-hand man at Hilldale, Mathew Spalding, who is Hillsdale VP in charge of Hillsdale's DC operations.

The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission
Larry P. Arnn, Chair
Carol Swain, Vice Chair
Matthew Spalding, Executive Director
Phil Bryant
Jerry Davis
Michael Farris
Gay Hart Gaines
John Gibbs
Mike Gonzalez
Victor Davis Hanson
Charles Kesler
Peter Kirsanow
Thomas Lindsay
Bob McEwen
Ned Ryun
Julie Strauss

The 1776 Report provides the ideological foundation for the 1776 Curriculum, which is meant to provide an antidote to the fact-based inclusive portrayal of American history.

Dr. Kathleen O’Toole, Assistant Provost for K-12 Education at Hillsdale College, gave NWEF a statement about the Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum: 

“The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum represents a culmination of the endeavors of decades of forming and honing curriculum at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale Academy, and its dozens of associated K-12 charter schools, bringing together and producing a content-rich curriculum that covers both American history as well as American government, politics, and civics,” O’Toole said.

If you haven't already figured out why Gov. Bill Lee would choose this particular outfit as his unqualified choice to lead his new charter school initiative that would drain 32 million pubic dollars from the public schools just to get 50 new charters up and running, then you haven't been paying attention to Lee's complete subservience and unqualified fealty to the former President. Lee believes that schools must produce more patriots, and patriots must be miseducated by conservative propaganda.  

Bill Lee must be sent packing in November.  You think?

Cash to Poor Families and Early Childhood Brain Activity

In a randomized controlled study, new research finds "causal impact" between decreasing poverty and increased brain activity of young children. 

Significance

This study demonstrates the causal impact of a poverty reduction intervention on early childhood brain activity. Data from the Baby’s First Years study, a randomized control trial, show that a predictable, monthly unconditional cash transfer given to low-income families may have a causal impact on infant brain activity. In the context of greater economic resources, children’s experiences changed, and their brain activity adapted to those experiences. The resultant brain activity patterns have been shown to be associated with the development of subsequent cognitive skills.

Abstract

Early childhood poverty is a risk factor for lower school achievement, reduced earnings, and poorer health, and has been associated with differences in brain structure and function. Whether poverty causes differences in neurodevelopment, or is merely associated with factors that cause such differences, remains unclear. Here, we report estimates of the causal impact of a poverty reduction intervention on brain activity in the first year of life. We draw data from a subsample of the Baby’s First Years study, which recruited 1,000 diverse low-income mother–infant dyads. Shortly after giving birth, mothers were randomized to receive either a large or nominal monthly unconditional cash gift. Infant brain activity was assessed at approximately 1 y of age in the child’s home, using resting electroencephalography (EEG; n = 435). We hypothesized that infants in the high-cash gift group would have greater EEG power in the mid- to high-frequency bands and reduced power in a low-frequency band compared with infants in the low-cash gift group. Indeed, infants in the high-cash gift group showed more power in high-frequency bands. Effect sizes were similar in magnitude to many scalable education interventions, although the significance of estimates varied with the analytic specification. In sum, using a rigorous randomized design, we provide evidence that giving monthly unconditional cash transfers to mothers experiencing poverty in the first year of their children’s lives may change infant brain activity. Such changes reflect neuroplasticity and environmental adaptation and display a pattern that has been associated with the development of subsequent cognitive skills.

This latest finding is consistent with a body of research that shows direct correlations between family wealth, family income, school funding, and child academic achievement levels.  

It is sickening to think that monthly federal tax credit payments to families with children have been discontinued due to white privileged intransigence among anti-democrats.  The cutting of child poverty in half, which the program promised to accomplish in just a few years, could have been the greatest education reform of the past half century--if education reform were actually meant to help the disenfranchised, rather than holding them accountable for the educational problems that the white power establishment created.

How to Learn Nothing from the Failure of VAM-Based Teacher Evaluation

The Annenberg Institute for School Reform is a most exclusive academic club lavishly funded and outfitted at Brown U. for the advancement of corporate education in America. 

The Institute is headed by Susanna Loeb, who has a whole slew of degrees from prestigious universities, none of which has anything to do with the science and art of schooling, teaching, or learning.  

Researchers at the Institute are circulating a working paper that, at first glance, would suggest that school reformers might have learned something about the failure of teacher evaluation based on value-added models applied to student test scores. The abstract:

Starting in 2009, the U.S. public education system undertook a massive effort to institute new high-stakes teacher evaluation systems. We examine the effects of these reforms on student achievement and attainment at a national scale by exploiting the staggered timing of implementation across states. We find precisely estimated null effects, on average, that rule out impacts as small as 1.5 percent of a standard deviation for achievement and 1 percentage point for high school graduation and college enrollment. We also find little evidence of heterogeneous effects across an index measuring system design rigor, specific design features, and district characteristics.

So could this mean that the national failure of VAM applied to teacher evaluation might translate to decreasing the brutalization of teachers and the waste of student learning time that resulted from the implementation of VAM beginning in 2009? No such luck.  

 

The conclusion of the paper, in fact, clearly shows that the Annenbergers have concluded that the failure to raise test scores by corporate accountability means (VAM) resulted from laggard states and districts that did not adhere strictly to the VAM's mad methods.  In short, the corporate-led failure of VAM in education happened as a result of schools not being corporate enough:

Firms in the private sector often fail to implement best management practices and performance evaluation systems because of imperfectly competitive markets and the costs of implementing such policies and practices (Bloom and Van Reenen 2007). These same factors are likely to have influenced the design and implementation of teacher evaluation reforms. Unlike firms in a perfectly competitive market with incentives to implement management and evaluation systems that increase productivity, school districts and states face less competitive pressure to innovate. Similarly, adopting evaluation systems like the one implemented in Washington D.C. requires a significant investment of time, money, and political capital. Many states may have believed that the costs of these investments outweighed the benefits. Consequently, the evaluation systems adopted by many states were not meaningfully different from the status quo and subsequently failed to improve student outcomes.

So the Gates-Duncan RTTT corporate plan for teacher evaluation failed not because it was a corporate model but because it was not corporate enough!  In short, there were way too many small carrots and not enough big sticks.

 

British Study Finds Phonics Fanaticism "is uninformed and failing children"

 A new British study reported in The Guardian finds that the imbalance created by dependence on phonics in reading instruction to the exclusion of balanced literacy approaches effectively limits children's comprehension and understanding of what they read, children's desire to read, children's appreciation of books, and their reading achievement scores. 

So what's not to love about concentrated phonics instruction, especially for disenfranchised children?  After all, it is best child neurological training regimen for a life without independent thinking, individual initiative, a broad understanding of how the world works, or the capacity for imaginative problem solving.

The study concludes with a call for national reading curriculum and instruction policy control to be removed from appointed officials whose job it is to pursue an education agenda based on political ideology rather than empirical evidence. How quaint!

From The Guardian:

A landmark study has described the way primary school pupils are taught to read in England as “uninformed and failing children”, calling on the government to drop its narrow focus on phonics.

Researchers at UCL’s Institute of Education say the current emphasis on synthetic phonics, which teaches children to read by helping them to identify and pronounce sounds which they blend together to make words, is “not underpinned by the latest evidence”.

They claim analysis of multiple systematic reviews, experimental trials and data from international assessment tests such as Pisa suggests that teaching reading in England may have been less successful since the adoption of the synthetic phonics approach rather than more.

The UCL researchers are among 250 signatories to a letter which has been sent to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, calling on the government to allow for a wider range of approaches to teaching reading, which would allow teachers to use their own judgment about which is best for their pupils. . . .

New Sex Crimes Charges Against Another KIPP Teacher

In August 2021, the Southern District of New York announced sex crimes charges against a former Bronx KIPP teacher, Jesus Concepcion, who is now facing 10 years to life on one charge and 15 years to life on another. 

Both federal charges involve sex crimes with KIPP middle school students. From the Justice Department Press Release last August:

CONCEPCION, 48, of Simpsonville, South Carolina, is charged with four counts of enticing a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity and four counts of transporting a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity, each of which carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison.  CONCEPCION also is charged with inducing a minor to produce child pornography, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Then, in December of 2021, another KIPP teacher, Cesar Sanchez, was charged in Manhattan Criminal Court with sexually molesting students at KIPP Washington Heights, beginning when one girl was in fourth grade. 

Both Sanchez and the principal of KIPP Washington Heights, Danny Swersky, have been fired. Both were suspended temporarily in 2019 for an undisclosed misconduct charge that occurred during a school trip.

Three major news outlets have carried the KIPP sex abuse stories, but not the New York Times, which most often can be counted to remain mum about charter school abusers and predators.

The latest sex crimes charges follow on the firing of KIPP co-founder, Mike Feinberg, in 2018 amid accusations of sex assault against a KIPP middle school student.

KIPP, Inc. Seeks More Handouts from Public Schools

 Last updated 01/17/22

The KIPP Foundation is flush with cash.  Over the past 20 years, KIPP has received dozens of federal grants worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  In 2019, alone, KIPP has handed a whopping $86 million by the U.S. Department of Education.  

And on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars in per pupil funding each year that public school system pay out to the corporate welfare kings of the charter world, the KIPP Foundation took in $90 million in grants and tax exempt donations just in 2020.

 

 

That same year KIPP, Inc. paid its top nine executives over $3 million in salaries, which does not include benefits, bonuses, and travel expenses. David Levin, alone, rakes in more than the President of the United States.

 

 

So it would seem surprising to anyone who doesn't understand KIPP's insatiable greed and dedication to racial sterilization that KIPP would elbow its way past a school board's unanimous decision to reject another KIPP chain gang back in 2020.  Here's the school board's thinking at the time of the vote to reject:

Kaivan Yuen, assistant superintendent for educational services, recommended the board vote to deny the request for a number of reasons, including:

• There was no indication on how teachers can manage time and structure to hold student conferences while also providing lessons to the other students.
• Noncredentialed teachers are responsible for a classroom the last Friday of each month.
• There is insufficient time for students who are learning to speak Spanish.
• There is no program for gifted students
• KIPP’s special education program relies entirely on membership in getting approved for a program based in El  Dorado County and its petition does not adequately explain what happens if KIPP doesn’t get in.
• No details were provided for physical education classes.
• There is no description of a specific health unit or curriculum.

And what happened to KIPP's plans to open a new school after its successful appeal to a state level commission that the charter industry has packed with charter school supporters?  Well, not much.  Seems KIPP decided to save money by piling in on an existing elementary school in the Montebello School District, where it quickly sought, and achieved, a reduction in the amount of rent charged by the District.

 

The Sunny Side of Corruption by Jay Mathews

American print media's most prominent charter school cheerleader is at it again.  In his most recent Washington Post column, Jay Mathews is preaching the virtues of IDEA Charter Schools, Inc., which recently lost its CEO founder and other senior leaders due to corruption charges involving private jets, NBA sky boxes, and routine use of public funds for "personal benefit:"

A financial investigation “uncovered substantial evidence that … a small number of IDEA senior leaders directed the use of IDEA financial and staff resources for their personal benefit on multiple occasions,” Board Chair Al Lopez wrote in a letter Tuesday. “Furthermore, their actions appeared to be done in a manner to avoid detection by the standard external audit and internal control processes that the Board had in place at the time.”

None of this corruption or efforts to conceal the crimes could ever dampen Jay's enthusiasm, however.  Nor has Mathews departed from his unique brand of dissembling propaganda. Just one example from this latest column:

Charters are independently run public schools that use tax dollars. Most are no better academically than regular public schools. But a 2013 Stanford University report showed that 25 percent of charters were significantly better in reading achievement and 29 percent were significantly better in math achievement than neighboring regular public schools serving the same kinds of students.

When we go to the actual research report that includes Jay's numbers, we find the details that put a whole new light on Jay's sunny summary.  From the Credo Study, 2013, p. 22 Executive Summary:

Figure 8 shows the performance of charter schools relative to the TPS in their market. Based on our analyses, we found 25 percent of schools had significantly stronger growth than their TPS market counterparts in reading, 56 percent were not significantly different and 19 percent of schools had weaker growth. In math, the results show that 29 percent of charter schools had stronger growth than their TPS market counterparts, 40 percent had growth that was not significantly different, and 31 percent had weaker growth. These results were an improvement over those in the 2009 report.

 

 

 

 

New Year's Resolution: Eliminate "Rigor" from Education Lexicon

If there is a single word that comes close to capturing the zeitgeist of corporate education austerity policies that have metastasized since the Reagan era (among both Democrats and Republicans), it would be a five-letter signifier that has done more damage to effective and humane schooling than any one word in the English language: "rigor." 

If you can believe the education efficiency zealots of the last two generations, the answer to most questions about schooling have the same answer: more "rigor." Whether we're talking about curriculum, teacher quality, teacher education, leadership, or assessment, what we need is more "rigor."

I went to Webster's online looking for a word that might serve as an adequate replacement.  Here's some of what I found for the word "rigor:"

Synonyms & Antonyms of rigor

2. the quality or state of being demanding or unyielding (as in discipline or criticism)

• after being coddled by his former coach, the swimmer was shocked by the rigor of the new training program

Synonyms for rigor

• exactingness,
• hardness,
• harshness,
• inflexibility,
• rigidity,
• rigidness,
• rigorousness,
• severity,
• sternness,
• strictness,
• stringency

Words Related to rigor

• callousness,
• hard-heartedness,
• implacability,
• obduracy,
• obdurateness,
• pitilessness

• dourness,
• gruffness

• asceticism,
• austereness,
• austerity,
• monasticism

• determination,
• firmness,
• resolve,
• steadfastness

• obstinacy,
• stubbornness

Near Antonyms for rigor

• forbearance,
• indulgence,
• kindness,
• lenience,
• patience,
• softness,
• tenderness,
• tolerance

• responsiveness,
• willingness

• compliance,
• pliability,
• pliancy

Antonyms for rigor

• flexibility,
• gentleness,
• laxness,
• mildness

And, yet, there seems to be no end to the use of this code word for segregated "no excuses" KIPP Model schools, "zero tolerance" straight jacket discipline, and racist standardized testing regimes that effectively keep marginalized populations on the margins.

Today I came across an interview with Amanda Ripley, who has become one of the pretty masks placed on the corporate education Frankenstein that continues to wreak havoc with any efforts to transform schools into substantive learning communities aimed at opening and integrating the world for children in challenging and supportive ways.

In the summary provided for her interview, Amanda praises the "rigorous learning" of Korean students.  What does Amanda know about Korean education? Well, she interviewed a student who lived in both Korea and the U. S.:

Kids rise to the level of their peer culture when it comes to how important they think rigorous learning is. Especially adolescents are extremely focused on what their peers are doing. There’s a great example of a girl I met in Korea named Jenny, who had lived half of her life in the U.S. and then moved back to Korea. And what she talked about was how different she was in each place. In Korea, everybody worked really hard and took school really seriously, so she did too. And then in [America], school was much lower on her priority list.

No, Amanda, students in Korea try to rise to the level of the monstrous system created by a steroidal version of American capitalism, which has created a dystopian regime whereby parents sacrifice the health and well-being of their children for the "rigorous" demands of a soul-crushing system of schooling based on memorization and recitation.   

This is from a former teacher in one of Korea's hagwons, or cram schools:

Cram schools like the one I taught in — known as hagwons in Korean — are a mainstay of the South Korean education system and a symbol of parental yearning to see their children succeed at all costs. Hagwons are soulless facilities, with room after room divided by thin walls, lit by long fluorescent bulbs, and stuffed with students memorizing English vocabulary, Korean grammar rules and math formulas. Students typically stay after regular school hours until 10 p.m. or later.

Herded to various educational outlets and programs by parents, the average South Korean student works up to 13 hours a day, while the average high school student sleeps only 5.5 hours a night to ensure there is sufficient time for studying. Hagwons consume more than half of spending on private education.

Any Ripley hit job wouldn't be complete without an attack on teacher education programs in the U. S. While she decries the continued existence of non-rigorous "mediocre teacher training colleges," she has nothing to say about the micro-preparation provided to Teach for America beginner missionaries who are placed into schools with children who need the most experienced and best prepared teachers among us. Nor does she voice any objection to the exploitative non-higher ed alternative certification programs that leave would-be teachers less prepared than accredited university programs. 

Finally, one of Ripley's conjectures remains truly puzzling to me, even considering her thorough lack of understanding of how schools actually work and how teachers experience their jobs:

Anyone who has seen a great teacher or been a great teacher knows that it is not different from being the CEO of a company; there is a lot that is demanded of you and it requires a lot of support.

Yes, Amanda, "rigorous" teaching is sort of like being a CEO, except for the pay, the prestige, the perks, the lifestyle, and the autonomy. Teachers in the U.S. rank 27th in teacher pay among 32 OECD countries.  

I'm still looking for a substitute for "rigor." Until I find it, I guess I'll settle for challenging, supportive, substantive, open, and integrative.

Education Reform Outcomes: Segregation and Child Punishment

One year after the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, Milton Friedman published The Role of Government in Education (1955), a screed in which Friedman laid out for the first time a case for school choice and government-funded school vouchers. Amazing timing, right?

That publication marked the beginning of the modern school reform movement, which has produced an impressive array of ideas and strategies whose primary effects have been to maintain segregation and to punish disenfranchised children.

But, you say, what about a good intentions of reformers like Bobby Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama? And my response will always be, so what? 

How long will we continue to try to assess reformers' intentions, rather than focusing on the outcomes and the effects of reforms?

We know, in fact, what's the road to hell is paved with, and I gave up along time ago trying to determine what is in another person's heart. I am only interested in examining the outcomes of actions and/or inactions of actors whose unconscious motivations remain invisible to themselves and others. 

Meanwhile, here is a clip from the latest example of another upending of a reform idea that sounded good to some people at the time that it was implemented:

Idesha Fraser was proud to hear that a teacher at P.S. 282 in Park Slope had recognized her fourth-grade daughter’s academic potential and transferred her into the school’s Gifted and Talented program. Still, she had misgivings. Fraser’s daughter had been one of many Black students in a diverse classroom, but when she started in the Gifted and Talented program in September, she was one of only a few Black students in a predominantly white classroom.

“They’re drastically different. It’s very visible,” said Fraser. “My daughter hasn’t mentioned it to me — we haven’t talked about skin color — but she’s pretty intuitive. I’m pretty sure she notices it.”

Which is why Fraser cheered Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement last week that New York City would be ending its Gifted and Talented programs, acknowledging that they had exacerbated racial segregation in the city’s school system. The numbers are stark: While Black and Latino students make up nearly 60 percent of the city’s 65,000 kindergarteners, they fill just 14 percent of the 2,500 Gifted and Talented seats. About 75 percent of the seats go to Asian American and white students, who represent only 25 percent of the citywide population.

If you can think of an education reform from the past 65 years that is not 1) segregative, or 2) harmful to children, please let me know about it.