This is a great article, one of those writings that makes it very hard to excerpt just a little of it.
From the Nieman Watchdog site called Questions the Press Should Ask.
Miracle schools, vouchers and all that educational flim-flamFormer Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch tells reporters to dig deep when states or school districts or even individual schools claim big educational gains; chances are someone is gaming the system. She shows how such gaming works – and when it comes to asking the right questions, Ravitch could be anyone’s assignment editor.
Here is part of that interview.
Be skeptical of miracle schools. Sometimes their dramatic gains disappear in a year or two or three. Most such claims rely on cheating or gaming the system or on intensive test prep that involves teaching children how to answer test questions. These same children, having learned to take tests, may actually be very poorly educated, even in the subjects where their scores were rising.
Whenever a school has a dramatic increase in test scores in only one or two years, ask questions about the participation rate: How many kids started the school? How many were tested? Were low-performing students held back in a previous grade to inflate the scores? Reporters should also check to see if there has been any verification to make sure that there was no cheating (e.g., a high erasure rate, changing scores from wrong to right). Who graded the papers? Did teachers have access to the test questions before the test was given? If so, they might have taught the test questions during practice sessions.
Ask questions of charter schools about skimming, excluding, winnowing out low-scoring students. Ask about the proportion of special ed students, and watch for numbers of spec-ed that do not include the most severely disabled. Many charters take children with the mildest disabilities while leaving the most challenging spec-ed to the regular public schools. Ask about the proportion of Limited English Proficient/English Language Learners (LEP/ELL) students. Most charters have exceptionally small proportions of LEP/ELL as compared to local public schools.
Substance News website has more about the Nieman nod to Diane Ravitch.
Harvard posts Ravitch's suggestions for reporters covering 'miracle' school storiesThe Harvard University Neiman Fellowship is one of the most prestigious in journalism, and "Nieman Fellow" on a mainstream media reporter's resume is almost as good a a Pulitzer Prize (maybe even better since "The Wire" did its devastating critique of the Pulitzer). On April 13, 2011, Nieman gave a nod to skeptical reporting on charter school and other "miracles" by publishing Diane Ravitch's suggestions for reporters when they receive tips about "miracle" schools and "miracle" test score gains. Substance has been reporting the truth about the Wall Street anti-public school miracles since we exposed The Marva Collins Hoax in 1983, but some of the main methods of fabricating school stories have been tried and proven since Marva was unveiled in Chicago more than 25 years ago as the alternative to "failing" public schools and "greedy" public school teachers. As readers can see below, the basic elements of the fraudulent script have not changed that much since Marva crafted her hoax, but successive generations of reporters have taken the bait and touted the "miracles" ever since.
Here is more from Ravitch at the Substance link. Note that she points out that the pro-charter movie Waiting for Superman actually quoted wrong figures to make their point.
When a charter school reports miraculous results, be sure to ask about the attrition rate. Some highly successful charters push out low-performing kids and their enrollment falls over the years (and the departing students are not replaced). Recently Arne Duncan hailed a “miracle” school in Chicago—Urban Prep—where all the students who graduated were accepted into college. But 150 students started and only 107 graduated. The 107 graduates had much lower test scores than the average for Chicago public school students. The school did a good job of getting the students into college (perhaps that was a miracle) but they were not better educated than students in the regular public schools.
In another instance, one of the “amazing” schools singled out by the 2010 documentary “Waiting for Superman” admits 140 students, but only 34 graduated. That’s a 75 per cent attrition rate. Some miracle.
One of the central claims made in “Waiting for Superman” is that 70 per cent of eighth grade students in the USA read “below grade level.” That statistic is wrong. Someone misread the federal testing program data. The relevant figure was “below basic.” Twenty five per cent of eighth grade students are “below basic,” not 70 per cent.
She asks some good questions at the end, such as "the Obama administration embraced the accountability policies of the Bush administration? Why does the president publicly say he is against standardized testing at the same time that his administration is demanding more emphasis on standardized testing? Why has the Obama administration embraced choice, which was a staple of the GOP agenda?"
They are good questions. An article from 2005 pointed out that the "choice" movement in schools is from libertarian and conservative think tanks.
Insuring Inequality..The Privatization of Public Education in the U.S.The Movement to Privatize Public Schools in the U.S.
"School choice" is the public code word for the political movement to privatize public education in the U.S., but the movement's real agenda is made clear by its ideological vanguard. The Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank, explicitly advocates privatization in its school choice policy statement:
"Classical liberals seek education policies that will empower parents and clear the path for entrepreneurial activity. We envision a day when state-run schools give way to a dynamic independent system of schools competing to meet the needs of every American child. ("Education and Child Policy: School Choice")"
The progress of the school choice movement in the U.S. is monitored and reported on annually by The Heritage Foundation, another conservative Washington-based think tank that is at the vanguard of the privatization movement. Its 2005 progress report is celebratory:
"Parental choice is growing. Six states and the District of Columbia offer government scholarships to attend a private school of choice; six states offer tax credits or deductions for education expenses or contributions to scholarship programs; 40 states and D.C. have enacted charter school laws; 15 states guarantee public school choice within or between districts; 21 states have comprehensive dual enrollment programs; and home-schooling is legal in every state. ("Choices in Education: 2005 Progress Report")"
No doubt left in my mind that our country now has both parties pursuing what started as a very conservative goal.
Thanks to Diane Ravitch for reminding us to be cautious about "miracles", and telling us to follow the money.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
