Mass. Democratic Party eviscerates education plank in draft platform

Recently released is the draft platform of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, and it is frankly a wholesale abdication of progressive values on education. This document, which the Democratic State Committee wishes to put in place of the party's current platform after a vote at the convention, cries out for opposition for anybody who thinks being a Democrat means more than the letter after your name. On "test or fail" education, charters, bilingual education, increased funding for education, gifted and talented education, the separation of church and state in education -- on all of these issues, the state party wants to fold.

With complete disregard to testimony supplied from the education platform hearing, the Democratic State Committee is seeking to tear the progressive heart out of the party's education plank. Quite simply, the effort to implement this milquetoast shafting of progressive values must be opposed, on the convention floor if necessary. I urge anybody interested in education of Massachusetts students, be they student, parent, educator, or community member, to contact me at .

Below are the most egregious examples:

• The current platform, set to expire at the convention, addressed the issue of the place of standardized tests in education, particularly the MCAS. The MCAS is a rather arbitrary standardized test administered by a well-connected private company in New Hampshire -- see here and here for more. The current platform opposes "high stakes testing, including the use of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests as the sole determinant for graduation from high school". All of that is gone. Support for "comprehensive, authentic, and multiple means of assessment for students, schools, and districts" has also been axed from the platform. Rejection of MCAS-based scholarships? Vanished. This draft platform is completely, 100% silent on the conservative, privatized "test or fail" approach to education. This means that the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee has released a document that moves significantly further to embracing the model whereby a student's success is measured by which bubbles s/he fills in.
• The current platform supports "amendments providing assistance to poorly performing schools rather than the sanctions imposed by the federal Elementary and Secondary School Education Act, known as the No Child Left Behind Act." The draft platform is silent on George W. Bush's power grab on behalf of federal bureaucrats.
• The draft platform ignores the issue of charter schools. Capping the number of these quasi-public schools, which have all the funding and protections of public education without many of their obligations, is mentioned in the old platform. This platform is silent on that issue.
• The draft platform refuses to support bilingual education. It also ignored testimony I organized from several dozen professors, parents and educators in support of a challenging education for gifted and talented students. Special education students are singled out as the only ones needing specific support in the draft platform.
• We have gone from "we support increased funding to our public higher education system" to "we support public higher education". Same on public libraries. I gather the state committee supports delicious ice cream on a hot summer's day as well.
• One beam in Jefferson's "wall of separation"of church and state has been scrubbed as well: "We oppose any effort to change the state constitutional prohibition against public funding of private or religious schools, including the use of credits or vouchers." has been replaced by...nothing.

In short, this is a coward's platform, and I regret that I was out of state when this abomination was composed and passed at the state committee meeting. Perhaps the Massachusetts Democratic Party thinks its members will dumbly assent to this evisceration of liberal values in education. Maybe they think there is safety in gutlessly standing for puppy dogs, mom's apple pie, and not much else. These people clearly have no interest in taking a stand on anything to do with education.

I think they are wrong. If you agree, please get in touch with me at so we can organize to defend real public education -- a world-elite institution -- in this state. Please use all, part, or a snippet of this as you see fit on your own blog or email. The state party is trying to wave the flag of surrender on education, and we can't let them.


Below are side-by-side copies of full summary of the current and draft platforms.

Current platform

Draft of new platform

Massachusetts Democrats believe that a high quality, publicly funded education is the cornerstone of our society, our democracy, and our economy. We support funding for education programs from pre-kindergarten through higher education, and for opportunities for lifelong learning. We believe closing the achievement gap among public schools is a 21st century civil right. We support full funding for all mandated programs including special education and English as a Second Language programs. In order to meet our constitutional obligation to provide for equal education opportunities for all children, we support increasing state aid to schools, through Chapter 70 . We support the current cap on charter schools. We support comprehensive, authentic, and multiple means of assessment for students, schools, and districts, as stated in the Education Reform Act of 1993. We support amendments providing assistance to poorly performing schools rather than the sanctions imposed by the federal Elementary and Secondary School Education Act, known as the "No Child Left Behind" Act. We support state funding to ensure that all schools provide small class size. We support full funding for regional school transportation. We support funding programs and establishing policies to attract, hire, and retain motivated, competent teachers. We support on-going studies of educational practices and their value to students. We support increased funding for METCO to continue its important role in minority student achievement and desegregation. We support the implementation and full funding of high quality, universal early education and care, expansion of early education programs in our public schools, and state funding to ensure that all school districts offer full-day kindergarten to all families who want it. We support state funding for after-school and summer enrichment programs for all children. We support increased funding to our public higher education system, to ensure that we can attract and retain top-quality faculty and staff, and to ensure that all students in Massachusetts have access to an affordable, high quality, regionally accessible public higher education. We support state and federal programs to provide grants, loans, and scholarships to college students, especially for those attending public colleges; but we reject scholarships based upon performance on the MCAS. We support increased state and federal funding to build, renovate, and modernize our schools and colleges and libraries. We support adult education and support increased state and federal funding to ensure that all adults have access to literacy or language classes. We oppose the expanding trend toward hiring part time and contingent workers, especially adjunct professors, and the misclassification of contract workers, as a means of avoiding paying benefits and other employment guarantees. We oppose any effort to change the state constitutional prohibition against public funding of private or religious schools, including the use of credits or vouchers. We oppose high stakes testing, including the use of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests as the sole determinant for graduation from high school.

Massachusetts Democrats believe that everyone should have access to high-quality educational opportunities from birth through adulthood. We believe that our education system should successfully prepare our children for life and work. Massachusetts Democrats are committed to investing in public education because we know that it is the cornerstone of our society, our democracy, and our economic future. Massachusetts Democrats Support: a) High-quality, universal preschool and full-day kindergarten; b) Closing the achievement gap for poor and minority students; c) High school drop out prevention programs; d) Smaller class sizes; e) Professional development for public educators; f) High-quality after school and summer enrichment programs; Massachusetts Democratic Party Draft Platform 3 g) Expanded learning time; h) The preservation and enhancement of our school and public libraries; i) Civics education as an integral part of public school curriculum; j) Accessibility for special needs students and adequate funding; k) Closer relationship between parents, guardians, teachers and administrators; l) Innovative programs to encourage recruitment and retention of high quality teachers; m) Public higher education; n) College affordability and needs-based financial aid; o) In-state tuition for all resident students who are admitted to Massachusetts public colleges and universities; and p) Adult Basic Education and English for Speakers of Other Language programs.

(Cross-posted on Blue Mass Group, and whoever else will post it.

Educational triage under No Child Left Behind

As part of my ongoing explanation of life in the Brave New World of education, I thought I'd expound on the notion of what I call "educational triage" -- the exercise of taking the students barely missing the MCAS, and focusing on them. These students, often called "bubble kids", receive a disproportionate amount of time in professional development, curriculum meetings, and department analyses.

You see, under the MCAS, a student can receive four scores: Advanced, Proficient (both passing), Needs Improvement, and Failing. The cut-off for "Proficient" is a score of 240.

Schools are ranked, tested, rewarded, punished, and in general judged by the proportion of students who are "proficient or better". That's it. No bonus points for advanced, no comparison of who's failing badly, and who's failing miserably. Many times have I seen a kid scoring "failing" essentially abandoned as a lost cause for the school. Here's an example to clarify:

Student	Initial Score	Second Score
Ming*	195	235
Khaled	245	285
Alex	235	245
Passing = 240+

Under nearly every way that the bureaucracies of Massachusetts and the United States assess schools, the only improvement there that counts is that of Alex. An improvement 4 times as dramatic by Ming or Khaled means nothing. Zero. I've seen disastrous empirical analyses of scores by people who supposedly know better, because only "proficient" students were counted, and ignored those scoring "advanced" ignored, resulting in severe underscoring of districts. (Nothing earns you the contempt of a curriculum specialist more than asking "what about students who score advanced?")

Because getting a student from barely surviving to flourishing gets you nothing under this system, just as helping a student get from unable to write their name to almost passing is viewed officially as a waste of time, we do triage. Students are prioritized. Wanna guess which ones?

Right. The Alexes of the world get all the attention and coaching. I'm aware of classes tailored to these students, wherein the Khaleds and Mings of the class are essentially left to their own devices. The Alexes within a grade are identified, and targeted on an almost daily basis. Hopefully Ming doesn't drool on herself, and Khaled doesn't get so bored he starts disrupting the class. "Successful" schools are those that abandon their supposed mission to get Alex where s/he has to go.

This is another aspect of our system. Everything from funding cuts and state takeovers to rewards and publicity depends on turning "Needs Improvement" into "Proficient", and it's sweet to turn an occasional "Failing" into "Proficient".

In the Age of Accountability, these are the only students districts are truly accountable for...so it's a small wonder that these are the only students many districts are truly interested in.

*I've taken over a dozen education courses in almost as many forms, and I've yet to meet an education instructor/professor/facilitator who doesn't rely exclusively on names of Western European origin for their examples -- everyone is Billy or Sally. I've had classes focus on integration in the classroom, and never heard mention of any name that isn't straight out of Germany or England. Hence, I try to use non-Western names in my examples...no racial stereotyping is meant or implied.

Why Smart Children Shouldn't Go to Public School I

One of my hugest, hugest pet peeves is the way that gifted and talented children are utterly ignored and robbed in the public education system. In what I expect will be an ongoing series of posts on this subject, I want to detail the extent to which our nation's policymakers have turned their backs on those young Americans with the greatest potential.

My first post will be a short list of straight numbers from a local school. These are authentic and confirmed, but I am not ready to reveal the source. In a given (and typical grade), here is the breakdown for the focus of the staff:

Staff description	# personnel
"Regular ed" (all students) teachers	12
"Regular ed" aides/assistants	0
"Special ed" (learning disability) teachers	3
"Special ed" aides/assistants)	4
Gifted teachers/aides/assistants	0

So these special ed students, who make up about 15% of the student population at this grade, have devoted to them over one third of the staff, including all aides and assistants.

Looking at the duty breakdown of the personnel, we get these numbers:
Ratio of regular ed students to devoted staff: 18 to 1
Ratio of special ed students to devoted staff: 5 to 1
Proportion of gifted students to devoted staff: ?? to 0

Gifted students get zero. This is a typical layout, and in later editions I will describe the laws -- and their selective interpretation -- that lead to such a situation. But the situation is this in a sentence: gifted students get zero.