But why?

During an online conversation at BlueMassGroup on charter schools, I got an interesting reply to some questions I posed to the still-not-fired Secretary of Education, Paul Reville:

Secretary Reville often notes himself: the distribution of student performance across charter schools is actually quite similar to the distribution of student performance across traditional public schools. That is really what the aggregate of available charter studies tells us. Meanwhile, some charter schools and some traditional public schools have achieved remarkable results.
--Tom Weber, Secretary Reville's Chief of Staff

I appreciate the willingness of Secretary Reville and his staff to continue this conversation, and the honesty of Mr. Weber in saying this. I'll give him credit.

But this statement to me is stunningly flabbergasting. The most rigorous study in the country says this, and Secretary Reville accepts that data. On average, there is no appreciable difference in student outcomes between district schools and charters. While student outcomes are the most important way to compare the two models, they aren't the only one. If outcomes are equal, then we go to other metrics.

District schools are accountable to democratically elected committee members. Charters are not. District schools educate all students, not just the easy ones. District schools don't shut down suddenly (PDF), get managed by felons, or squirrel public money into a rat's-nest of family and friends receiving astronomical salaries.

So here we see that Secretary Reville knows that charters don't offer anything better than districts in terms of student outcomes, and are beset with other problems. Yet he continues to promote charters in the general and the specific, to the point of engaging in legally questionable acts. On balance, district schools offer as strong an education as charters, yet offer superior service to the communities they serve.

Now, desperate, well-paid charter advocates may try to make hay of the fact that Reville implies that some charters are superior to some public schools, if you take the best extreme of the charter aggregate and the worst extreme of the district aggregate. Well, true. Some private security is superior to some police departments -- should we pour public money into private companies that provide security? If a Blackwater soldiers shoot better than a soldier in the US Army, should we make it easier to hire mercenaries? I don't hear anybody saying Medicare dollars should go to Anthem Blue Cross because an occasional Medicare procedure is worse the same as private ones. Smart policy making does not hope for the best of a given policy, but plans for the aggregate...not what we hope will happen, but what is most likely to happen. Doing otherwise is akin to betting on double zero at the roulette table.

So why does Reville so enthusiastically favor charters, when he frankly knows such policies do not benefit students and harm the democratic process? Why does our governor? I can't answer that question, but the best guide I've found is Secretary Reville's own words:

A number of key moderate allies like the Globe and the Boston Foundation

What does it take?

Massachusetts Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester just won't give up. You likely recall that Chester was the recipient of the infamous email wherein Secretary of Education Paul Reville urged his underling to approve an inadequate school because a refusal would:

cripple us with a number of key moderate allies like the Globe and the Boston Foundation

With Reville and Chester shoving their weight around, the application to open this charter school was approved. But playing Massachusetts education as their political plaything would come to undermine them. Upon request, the Massachusetts Inspector General reviewed the situation and agreed with the obvious, reporting that the school should never have been approved:

the process used in approving the GCACS charter was procedurally defective...granting of the charter was without authority of law

Wihtout Chester's obstinancy, however, we'd perhaps not have learned that his incompetence extended into a "Big Jim Rennie" style of skullduggery:

DESE and CSO officials apparently implemented a policy of disposing of virtually all documents containing the written records of individual DESE and CSO evaluators in determining whether the GCACS charter school application had met the criteria of the final charter school application; and 3) The OIG finds that DESE was not fully responsive to document requests made by the OIG and by legislators for records of DESE and CSO evaluators in determining whether the GCACS charter school application had met the criteria of the final charter school application.

So an illegal decision was made after quite possibly shredding key documents to prevent review, and efforts at oversight were given a stiff-arm. A hands-on executive would have dispatched Chester and Reville long ago. But Deval Patrick is a guy who stood by people like Dan Grabauskas and Jim Aloisi beyond belief. Hopefully, continuing pressure on the governor will convince him to engage in leadership and enact accountability among his allies/appointees. You'd think he'd learn...as with the others (and Marian Walsh), this corruption will not die out as a story...now Republican State Senate leader Tisei is calling on Chester to step down.

Shredded documents...contravening the law...currying media favor for the boss...all in service of the private sector to the decrement of the public sector. Even Governor Patrick admits this charter venture is a loser, and has done a 180 by coming out against the charter. As for Mr. Chester, he said on Thursday that:

I recognize that the controversy surrounding [the charter school], whether grounded in truth or not, has created a negative perception of our process.

Oh, he does admit that there may be lessons to be learned in this episode. Tinpot bureaucrat dictators are always happy to learn lessons...when they get caught.

If Chester still has a job on January 31st, Paul Reville should be gone on February 1st.

If Paul Reville and Mitchell Chester both have jobs on February 28th, we can ask if Deval Patrick should continue in his.

Uselessness

I'll admit that my blogging pace was trailed off over the holidays. When "real life" returns in a couple of days, the usual pace should return. But as for now, two stories about political uselessness is Massachusetts.

Nate Silver finds that Stephen Lynch is the least valuable Democrat in the northeast. In his words:

On the other end of the spectrum are a handful of Democrats who have negative scores. They vote with their party less often than a generic congressman from their district would, even without guaranteeing that the generic congressman is a Democrat. In other words, these are people who potentially deserve a primary challenge -- on average, dumping them would leave the Democrats better off, even if there's some chance that they'd be replaced by a Republican.

According to Silver's fancy-pants statistical analysis, Lynch ranks at 247th most valuable Democrat in the House (out of 258). The second-worst offender from the northeast? Massachusetts congressman Stephen Neal.



The Massachusetts Inspector General finds that "the 2008/2009 charter school application and approval process administered by BESE and DESE ended in the granting of a charter to [the controversial Gloucester Charter] GCACS in violation of the provisions of law, regulation, and procedure." This was a complete clustermug mismanaged by Paul Reville in service of Governor Patrick's poll numbers...with absolutely no foreseeable consequences to his career. Hopefully Reville will deny the charter, but his disregard and ignorance of government means that I will wait until it actually happens.

Globe staff has fun?

I am given to understand that some of the greatest fun that can be had by newspaper staffers is the juxtaposition of different items for humor's sake. Unlike those in the rarified air of opinion-making, these folks carry out subtle digs for the benefit of alert readers.

Hence I wonder if it's a coincidence that we see this article in today's Globe:

It looks as if five questions will be on next year’s statewide ballot in Massachusetts...a third would lift the cap on the number of charter schools from its current 120.

About two inches away from that article comes this:

A Springfield charter school placed under investigation by state education officials after its test scores spiked dramatically is now being run by a convicted felon....Swan pleaded guilty in 2007 to a $900,000 bid-rigging scheme at the Southwest Community Health Center where he was director. He was sentenced to two years of probation, including a year of house arrest.

On the other hand, an expert in bid-fixing is completely at home in Paul Reville's world of education.

I could go much more in-depth about this on the utter lack of democratic control or accountability for charter schools, but I'm just not in that kind of mood today. But I can't stop wondering how aggressively charter schools sought signatures from students' families on their ballot question -- using school resources for such politicking is par for the course for these non-public institutions.

However, I would refer you to this piece about changing school start times, something I brought up earlier in my occasional series on cheap and easy ways to improve public education.

Reville's Weak Tea

Today in Gloucester, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (whose membership is explicitly denied to teachers) met to consider, or re-consider, a charter school application. This application had been found significantly in need of revision. The application was approved anyway, and not long after that an email from Secretary of Education Paul Reville came out saying in part:

Our reality is that we have to show some sympathy in this group of charters or we'll get permanently labeled as hostile and they will cripple us with a number of key moderate allies like the Globe and the Boston Foundation. Frankly, I'd rather fight for the kids in the Waltham situation, but it sounds like you can't find a solid basis for standing behind that one. I'm not inclined to push Worcester, so that leaves Gloucester.

From Gloucester to Boston to all points in the Commonwealth, this email was read to indicate that Reville had pushed for this charter for the benefit of Deval Patrick's position re political opinion leaders. Unsurprisingly, this subject came up again at the Board meeting today, and this was Reville's explanation for his remarks:

He said the e-mail was “one piece of a lengthy conversation’’ that education officials had while discussing applications for charter schools proposed for Gloucester, Waltham and Worcester, his hometown...He added that the e-mail was part of the “process of deliberations. We all get advice from staff on a variety of issues.’’

I don't doubt all of this is true. I don't doubt that there was a long conversation which prompted this statement -- and I have trouble imagining that conversation to be about anything other than Governor Patrick's political fortunes. The opinion of the Boston Globe is at best orthogonal to choosing which policy outcomes will benefit students. No, this advice and conversation was political. And Reville says nothing at all to change that consideration -- he refuses to say what type of advice he was seeking to elicit this reaction, or what wider subject was under deliberation. Heck, a criminal could say that a recent bank robbery was part of his more general retirement plan...that doesn't make it acceptable.

Given a significant amount of time Reville had to prepare some sort of defense for these egregious actions, he offers something short of satisfying. While getting points for a reluctance to outright lie, Reville clearly cannot bother to find some way to make this statement at all appropriate to a Secretary of Education.

This tells me that A-Reville knows there is no good defense for what he did, and B-Deval Patrick doesn't care, and will keep him on regardless.

CW's latest steaming pile, Part One

Someone at Commonwealth magazine is very unhappy, I think. Michael Jonas, or one of his assistants, apparently decided to sabotage their assignment by turning in a column whose main idea is entirely contradicted by its contents. In case the intent was unclear, it was so shoddily supported that the editors would be able to tell that this assignment was not wanted.

Well, the editors never caught on, and we're left with this steaming pile of words that purports to be about something...education-related...or education-like. Of course, Commonwealth has published a long string of ant-labor, anti-teacher, anti-public ed columns, articles, and editorials (the line within is as blurry there as at FoxNews) and has recently slipped so far from professionalism or basic courtesy that it's gained notice how desperate their attacks have become.

Let's take the first couple lines of the "featured" article...

[S]tudy after study has shown the strong connection between forces outside schools — parenting, family stability, socioeconomic background — and achievement levels. Students in wealthier communities almost invariably score higher on standardized tests than those from lower-income communities.

Anybody accustomed to reading quality non-fiction would recognize this opening to an article on the impact a child's entire world has on his/her learning. But then, you wouldn't know Commonwealth, where any opening, anecdotal, study-quoting, the weather report, is a segue for explaining why everything about public school sucks. Indeed, this quote that education is only thinly related to teacher intervention is a setup for an article about how vital teacher intervention is to education...and that current teacher intervention sucks. It's akin to opening an article on British cowardice in World War II with Churchill's stand to fight on the beaches, the landing grounds, in the fields, in the streets, etc...

Hoping that you didn't notice, Jonas quickly slides into pseudo-academic declarations "a growing body of research" this or "study after study" that...by which he means the two antiquated studies he'll mention later on.

Having thoroughly undercut himself, Jonas trots out Paul Reville, who paused in his effort to kneecap efforts to improve student scores on standardized tests in order to tell us that

Teachers are the linchpin of student success..."That seems to be stipulated common knowledge now. People accept that,” says Paul Reville, the Massachusetts secretary of education. The issue, he says, becomes, “What do you do about it?”

So something the article just told us is wrong is now right.. Sorry, it's not right, but rather is true...er, seems to be true...wait, seems to be stipulated common knowledge (can he tapdance any faster?). With this strong declaration that Paul Reville believes in wiggle room, Jonas re-directs our attention to Reville's "very loaded question". Wanna guess how the dice get loaded?

The answer is that most teachers suck and everyone knows that but only Jonas has the guts to tell you.

To get a sense of how bad things are, Jonas again performs a bit of sabotage by diving right into the research, and triumphantly presenting an actual academic study. One performed in 1966. That's right, Commonwealth is seeking inspiration from work completed before Woodstock. You see, if we're going to talk about teaching in urban areas, it only makes sense to begin with a study of 1960s Gary, Indiana, an urban area with exactly zero relevance to modern Massachusetts. You see, before the first Super Bowl, teacher colleges had as little academic foundation as this article, which means that modern public education sucks. (If you don't believe me, read the article yourself...seriously.)

The column then moves on to value-added studies, teasing out interesting data over several paragraphs, data that comes from studies which Jonas himself declares are of a type that have "plenty of grounds for caution", are subject to "the haphazard use of value-added assessments" where "the potential pitfalls are everywhere". I do appreciate the author's honesty that his methodology is transparent and inadequate...though I'm not sure why he insists on using it.

We are then told that too many teachers receive positive evaluations. There is no proof given that this is incorrect or inauthentic, but of course Commonwealth assures us that it is. Finally, to wind up the section, Commonwealth holds forth that student assessment may or may not be reflective of teacher quality and may or may not be a useful way to measure teacher performance.

You see, teachers should be evaluated the same way as doctors, who are judged by the number of patients who take the medication he prescribes. (Wait, they aren't? Don't tell Mr. Jonas!)

And then....

Huh?

Well, it is getting late. Halfway through. Yeah, only halfway.

You're right.

It turns out I won't be able to go through this article in one night. Heck, it took these people a couple months to write this dreck, so I may as well take a couple days to untangle it.

Credit where due

I'll give credit where it's due...one of the stupider aspects of the MCAS was modified today.

Up until now, schools have been ranked by comparing the test scores of this year's students with the test scores of last year's students. A school was judged on how the scores changed from year to year. Whether the change happened because of the quality of the school's teaching, or the intrinsic skills and gaps of the students being educated, never came up. Schools and districts were judged on their ability to get better scores from different students.

Naturally, people without their heads up their a-- have been pointing out from the beginning that it would be more accurate to measure the growth of a certain class of students, something often called "longitudinal study". Now, schools and districts are judged on their ability to get better scores from the same students. Today, about 16 years after the law that birthed the MCAS passed, it's starting to happen.

Of course, lest too much common sense break out at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education at once, this new method will merely "complement" the old (misleading) method and will be "rolled out" over a few years.

I'll finish by noting two things:
1. This move was finalized before Paul Reville came on board, so he gets limited credit for the obvious idea...though I suppose good for him that he didn't kill it;
2. It's pretty sad that any time common sense breaks out about the MCAS it gets a banner headline.

It's Good to be Paul Reville

Our Secretary of Education leads quite a charmed existence. With the noise of a mayoral and Senatorial election, there's the hope that the citizens of the Commonwealth could forget the fact that Paul Reville has sought to buy media favor for his boss on the back of public education. Remember, Paul Reville overrode repeated decisions by boards of education professionals, forcing a poorly planned charter school on Gloucester. The reason for his decision to move $2.1 million away from elected city officials to an unaccountable council? To make the Boston Globe like his boss more (seriously, that was stated reason in a leaked email). Oh, and to a please some bunch of people who publicize pro-charter pamphlets that masquerade as studies. Let's repeat the Mission Statement of Reville's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, according to the Secretary himself:

Show some sympathy in this group of charters or we'll get permanently labeled as hostile and they will cripple us with a number of key moderate allies like the Globe and the Boston Foundation.

Had this been the approach to a hospital or nursing home, he'd be gone. But since it's just a school, Reville can report his comfort with the decision and his future prospects:

In an interview with the News Service, Reville said the recent flap – news reports outlined an email he sent in February appearing to advocate for the approval of a Gloucester charter school for political reasons – would not compromise his ability to promote Gov. Deval Patrick’s education agenda.

Oh, and if you disagree with anything Reville does, you're declaring "war" on him:

We’ve got wars on whether it’s English language or charter schools ... I do think we’re in danger right now of considerably losing public respect through our internecine war here.

So, he's been apparently promised that his job is safe no matter what he does, but any disagreement equals "war". There's something about doctorates in education that seems to blow up egos. Well, this combination of safe harbor and delusion may have driven Reville's latest move which will only serve to handicap public education further -- a decision to essentially classify most standardized test questions.

The whole idea is that standardized tests inform people of a school's strengths and weaknesses. Using the data from the test, a school can improve on its weak points. So, Paul Reville chose the most efficient route to kneecapping public education -- he's withholding essential data from schools.

If your school's fourth graders performed significantly worse than most fourth-graders in the state, you're supposed to find out the reasons. Say your fourth-graders did poorly on "number sense" questions -- well, the idea of accountability is that you study these questions and the answers to fix the mistakes, or you pay the price.

Except now Reville, and his well-connected New Hampshire friends who make big money off this test, refuse to release almost all the test questions. If most sixth graders in your local school miss question #34 on the MCAS, schools probably won't be able to find out what the question was, or what the correct and incorrect answers are. Measured Progress, Incorporated knows, but they and Reville refuse to give local teachers the tools to correct this. So next year, when question #34 is repeated as question #37, Reville and company can use this as an argument that public schools can't do their job -- they whiffed on the same question repeatedly! Nevermind that teachers never learn what question this is, and have to trust Measured Progress, Inc. with education the way we trust Diebold with elections -- all this means is more charter schools are needed!

(I should mention in balance that this sudden decision was announced in the name of saving money. Apparently, this privatization model means that Massachusetts has to pay private incorporated entities a lot of money to write math problems.)

So, in between playing politics with charter schools, Reville is spearheading a drive to handicap silly teachers who are trying to...improve their teaching. You know, the whole stated goal behind the "Test Every Child" movement. Perhaps if he gets another job guarantee form Deval Patrick, Reville can skip the whole logistical mess of actually testing children, and just issue test scores and lists of failing schools.

Don't forget -- "education reform" means that teachers are accountable and the Secretary of Education is not.

Fire Paul Reville. Now.

When the Governor and his associates waded into a local decision about charter schools in Gloucester, residents were properly outraged. From the mayor on down, local officials with the best understanding of the needs of Gloucester students had rejected the idea of opening a somewhat-public school in the city. Deval's desire to promote the privatization of education in the form of charters was in the ascendant, however, and Patrick demanded that local officials re-examine this charter application until they came up with the answer Deval wanted. An answer that will cost Gloucester $2.4 million in diverted school fees.

At first, I thought this routine merely the product of somebody who hadn't spent any real time in a public school for over 40 years, elected on a platform that pretty much ignored education. Politicians like that typically use charter schools in place of a real program on education because they remain quite frankly ignorant of the real issues. Turns out, I was being generous. An email from Deval's charter-loving secretary of education Paul Reville makes this clear:

This situation presents one of those painful dilemmas. In addition to being a no-win situation, it forces us into a political cul de sac where we could be permanently trapped. Our reality is that we have to show some sympathy in this group of charters or we'll get permanently labeled as hostile and they will cripple us with a number of key moderate allies like the Globe and the Boston Foundation. Frankly, I'd rather fight for the kids in the Waltham situation, but it sounds like you can't find a solid basis for standing behind that one. I'm not inclined to push Worcester, so that leaves Gloucester. My inclination is to think that you, I and the Governor all need to send at least one positive signal in this batch, and I gather that you think the best candidate is Gloucester.

From this we can see a few things:
1 - The "political cul de sac" receives far more attention than the actual good of the students at stake. Reville is clearly used to making educational decision for the good of his boss's poll numbers.
2 - They think the Boston Foundation is moderate.
3 - Promotion of private charters inherently represents "fighting for the kids".
4 - Charter decision are based upon who Reville is personally "inclined to push" for, not educational data.

To reiterate -- the City of Gloucester is losing $2.4 million because Deval Patrick's team is concerned about his ability to win re-election. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is moving $2.4 million of our tax dollars from the city of Gloucester to a semi-public concern in order to court the Boston Globe.

Deval Patrick has a Bush-like inability to back down from personnel mistakes without an incredible amount of pressure (see Marian Walsh and Jim Aloisi). Hopefully people will realize that his decision to turn the DESE into a lever for his sagging poll numbers is not acceptable. Firing Paul Reville would be a good first step.