The phrase “Mississippi Miracle” trips off the tongue. Who doesn’t like alliteration? More pointedly, who doesn’t like rising test scores?

In recent months, the phrase has been associated with Mississippi’s performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the Nation’s Report Card.

In 2022, Mississippi’s fourth graders eligible for free lunch (a marker used to estimate poverty) performed significantly higher on the NAEP reading test than similarly low-income children in 43 other states and the District of Columbia.

A mere nine years earlier, Mississippi’s fourth grade students living in poverty had NAEP reading scores near the bottom of the state scores list.

Although there have been skirmishes about whether or not these test score gains in Mississippi are real, and what they mean, we believe that they indicate genuine, although modest, progress in the literacy skills of young Mississippi schoolchildren.

The gains are due to the steps Mississippi took to support the teaching of literacy skills in early elementary classrooms and not, as some have suggested, due to the manipulation of the student population taking the test or to aligning Mississippi’s learning standards specifically to the NAEP standards.

NAEP is the only assessment used in all states and territories — a small subset of schools from each state participate — and the test’s design allows for state-by-state comparisons in a way no other assessment can.

Mississippi’s NAEP performance gains accompanied new policies that began at roughly the same time: The Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA), passed by the Mississippi legislature in 2013, is primarily known as a policy to hold back third graders who have not demonstrated basic reading proficiency on a state assessment.

Related:  Tennessee law could hold back thousands of third graders in bid to help kids recover from the pandemic

But the law is more complex than that one policy, as it focuses on capacity-building as well as mandates for K-3 reading instruction.

A big component of the LBPA and the substantial private investment that preceded it was a new vision for reading instruction. Some commentators call it “The Science of Reading” and highlight a narrow emphasis on phonics instruction. But, as is true for any complex phenomena, teaching reading and learning to read require knowledgeable practitioners able to adapt instruction to students’ needs.

Literacy is about making meaning of the world, and that meaning emerges through the study of content as much as from using knowledge of letter patterns to sound out unfamiliar words.

In Mississippi, there has been a push, backed by private funding through the Barksdale Reading Institute, to build greater understanding of the importance of code-based instruction and word recognition, including phonics and phonemic awareness (the ability to hear individual sounds within spoken words), alongside other components of reading that the Barksdale Reading Institute calls “The Reading Universe” — language comprehension (including background knowledge and vocabulary), reading comprehension and writing.

The LBPA provided numerous resources to support all of these aspects of better reading instruction.

The act included state funding for assistant teachers in grades K-3, access to literacy coaches and additional training. Reading Universe, for example, provided online classroom videos, interviews with teachers and detailed guides to support the teaching of specific literacy skills, such as identifying phonemes and drawing on background knowledge to make meaning of a text.

It would be a tragedy if policymakers in other states were to take away a surface lesson like “retention works” without a deeper understanding of the supports needed to bring about change.

Additionally, for many years leading up to and following passage of the LPBA, the literacy faculty at teacher preparation institutions discussed how to prepare teachers to teach reading in the early grades.

These supports, we suspect, have been influential in better preparing Mississippi elementary school teachers and changing instruction in K-3 classrooms. But they have also been hit or miss, with some schools and educators deeply understanding multiple facets of literacy instruction and others more exclusively relying on curriculum packages emphasizing the decoding of words.

Recognizing this hit or miss aspect is important. In Mississippi, there are geographic and demographic disparities in school funding, teacher availability and access to advanced coursework.

Schools in the Mississippi Delta underperform most schools. We can celebrate the literacy gains across the state, but we must also seek solutions to address disparities and uneven policy implementation.

We are not persuaded that the third grade retention policy has been a magic bullet; retention effects vary across contexts. Even in Mississippi, the evidence that retention boosts achievement is ambiguous.

A recent working paper by economists Kirsten Slungaard Mumma and Marcus Winters compared students who scored just below the threshold for third grade retention on the Mississippi ELA test in 2014-15 with those who scored just a bit above that threshold, tracing the students’ performance for several years.

They found that retained students outscored similar students who were not retained on the state ELA test. But this difference did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance, even with a sample of over 4,000 students.

Mumma and Winters acknowledge, however, that it is not possible to discern which features of the retention policy account for the upswing in subsequent ELA scores.

Students retained under the policy receive close monitoring and intensive reading interventions. This enhanced instruction, supported by intensive teacher coaching, may be what really matters.

Related: NAACP targets a new civil rights issue—reading

All we know for sure is that scores on a single, high-profile ELA test have gone up, and it’s worth taking time to understand why.

It would be a tragedy if policymakers in other states were to take away a surface lesson like “retention works” without a deeper understanding of the supports needed to bring about change, and the challenges still facing students in Mississippi — and similar states.

In education, miracles are often mirages; demographic inequalities in resources and achievement are stubborn; and quick-fix policies are no substitute for steady hard work.

Devon Brenner is the director of Social Science Research Center and a professor in the department of Teacher Education and Leadership at Mississippi State University.

Aaron M. Pallas is the Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

This story about Mississippi reading scores was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Last week, U.S. News & World Report released its first-ever rankings of public elementary and middle schools in the United States. Relying solely on aggregated state standardized test scores and demographic characteristics of students attending a given school, the periodical ranked elementary schools and middle schools within states and school districts. Schools in the bottom quarter of all schools in a given jurisdiction were not ranked, but simply identified as being in the bottom quarter.

Although USN&WR has proclaimed itself “the global authority in education rankings,” a healthy degree of skepticism is appropriate. Even “global authorities” can screw up! We already have good evidence that school and college rankings can distort normal educational processes, reinforcing social hierarchies that govern who enrolls in a school, how those students are treated and what happens to them thereafter.

At the K-12 level, we have seen how school ratings can boost or depress property values and shift who seeks to enroll in a given school.

The GreatSchools.org ratings attached to real estate websites such as Zillow, realtor.com and Redfin often are lower for schools serving low-income students and higher concentrations of Black and Hispanic students. If parents vote with their feet, the ratings may independently contribute to even greater levels of segregation across schools.

Related: After ‘Varsity Blues’ scandal, lots of talk about overhauling college admissions. Will there be action?

In truth, we know that, on average, schools serving lower-income children and children from historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups will inevitably receive lower ratings from schemes—like the new USN&WR rankings—that rely on the percentage of students who are deemed proficient in English and math.

The USN&WR ratings seek to blunt such criticisms by claiming that they take into account not only raw proficiency rates, but also rates that are adjusted for the mix of students in a given school. By blending these two ways of thinking about a school’s performance—the raw performance level of a school’s students, and an adjustment that seeks to identify schools that are doing better than other schools serving similar students—and then ranking schools on this blend, USN&WR intends to factor in both a school’s overall academic performance and its relative performance compared to similar schools.

At the K-12 level, we have seen how school ratings can boost or depress property values and shift who seeks to enroll in a given school.

The trouble is, it doesn’t work. At least that is the conclusion I reached after looking at data on more than 400 traditional public middle schools in New York City, where the rankings are dominated by students’ absolute proficiency levels. Moreover, those proficiency levels are closely tied to students’ family economic status and their entering levels of proficiency in English and math.

What the USN&WR rankings do, essentially, is identify schools that have been successful in enrolling higher-achieving, more affluent students. The focus is rather problematically on inputs rather than outputs. Shouldn’t we be far more interested in outputs, such as how schools contribute (or not) to student learning and development?

Related: Do U.S. colleges reinforce or reduce inequality?

I chose New York City middle schools to illustrate this point because New York publishes a lot of data on its public schools. All districts and states do; the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act requires states and school districts to publish report cards that include information on student performance, accountability ratings, per-pupil expenditures, and other information that parents and school officials deem relevant.

The USN&WR percentile rating for New York City public middle schools is predicted almost perfectly by the average percentage of students judged proficient in English and math on New York’s state assessments for grades 6 through 8.

The correlation between the two is r = .95, where 1.0 represents a perfect correlation. The USN&WR effort to introduce an adjustment for the kinds of students that a given school enrolls seems to be of little consequence. All schools in the bottom quartile of the USN&WR rankings have an average proficiency rate of 28 percent or lower.

School and college rankings can distort normal educational processes, reinforcing social hierarchies that govern who enrolls in a school, how those students are treated and what happens to them thereafter.

There is also strong evidence that the USN&WR rankings reflect the composition of the students attending schools, much more so than anything that schools actually do. Schools with concentrations of low-income students, based on New York City’s economic need index, are much more likely to have low USN&WR rankings than schools with economically advantaged students. The correlation is r = -.68, a strong association between student needs and a school’s ranking: the more students in poverty, the lower the ranking.

Finally, USN&WR ranking percentiles for New York City middle schools are tightly linked to students’ academic performance at the time they entered middle school. The correlation of r = .88 indicates that we can predict a middle school’s USN&WR rating very, very well simply by knowing how its students did in fifth grade — before entering middle school.

Is there a better way to rank schools? Some questions answer themselves. The right question to start with is: What problems are school rankings intended to solve?

Related: Should parents value academic achievement or academic growth in a school?

Are the USN&WR rankings intended to provide parents with information that can help them choose a school that is right for their child? Ranking schemes such as USN&WR’s do nothing to inform parents about what kind of experience their child might have in a school. Moreover, not all families have the opportunity to choose a desirable elementary or middle school without moving to a new neighborhood. As recently as five years ago, the parents of only 41 percent of students in grades 1-12 reported that public school choice was available to them.

Are the USN&WR rankings designed to hold schools accountable for their performance? If so, we would want a robust public debate about which outcomes matter most.

I guarantee you it wouldn’t boil down to scores on standardized tests. Moreover, policy entrepreneurs now realize that there is as much, if not more, interest in a school’s contribution to a child’s growth than in a snapshot of where children are at a particular moment in time.

Are the USN&WR rankings intended to be an accessible tool for parents to compare schools to one another? If so, what’s the point? State and local school report cards already do this.

It’s hard not to conclude this without a joke about where I would rank the new USN&WR rankings among all school rating and ranking schemes. As a matter of courtesy, I’ll simply say that they are somewhere in the bottom quarter of all ranking schemes.

Aaron Pallas is the Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology and Education and chair of the Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis at Teachers College, Columbia University. The Hechinger Report is an independently funded unit of Teachers College.

This story about school ratings was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Should we resume standardized testing of students this spring?

Policymakers place great stock in standardized test scores. In 1983, a landmark federal report, A Nation at Risk, pointed to declines over time in SAT scores and the U.S.’s middling performance on international assessments to claim a “rising tide of mediocrity” in American education. The report touched off a movement toward standards-based accountability: holding school districts, schools and even teachers accountable for the academic performance of their students.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) expanded the federal role in school oversight, calling for testing nearly all children in grades 3 through 8 annually in English Language Arts and mathematics to assess their proficiency. This testing, and reporting of results for demographic subgroups of students, was intended to prevent schools from hiding behind the performance of their strongest students, with no pressure to close achievement gaps.

This logic continues today, boosted by the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA), which retains annual student testing, with supports and sanctions for low-performing schools.

We’ve learned that test-based accountability systems such as NCLB and ESSA change the behaviors of schools and teachers, for both better and worse. They have concentrated educators’ attention on the tested subjects and standards, though at the cost of reduced time devoted to other school subjects and goals. The evidence on whether they “work” as intended — spurring higher performance among all students, and shrinking the gaps separating more-advantaged students from those who start with few advantages — is mixed.

Last spring, as the pandemic disrupted the schooling of millions of American schoolchildren, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos granted waivers to states that allowed them to bypass the standardized tests required by ESSA. Writing in September, though, she announced that states could not count on waivers for the 2020-21 school year, and should plan to assess their students with the customary tests.

Related: Teaching to the student, not the test

We are still in the midst of the pandemic, and schooling as we have known it for generations remains disrupted, with some students learning remotely and others coming to their brick-and-mortar schools on a daily basis. The configuration has changed with the pandemic’s surges, and it’s hard even to track which students are where. At the start of the 2020-21 school year, nearly three-quarters of the nation’s 100 largest school districts opened with fully remote learning, and about half of the nation’s districts overall opened fully remotely.

Teachers are the best judges of what their students know and can do, and teacher-developed assessments — perhaps supplemented by standardized formative assessments — are the best tools for matching students with the resources they need to fill in gaps in their skills and knowledge.

The primary argument for resuming testing is that we need to measure the consequences of the pandemic for student learning so we can develop a plan to respond. Already, there is evidence that this fall, students in grades 3 through 8 scored lower on standardized tests than similar students did in the fall of 2019, with sharper declines in mathematics than in reading. These early studies may have missed a swath of low-income students hurt the most by a shift to remote learning last spring, due to limited access to necessary technological and physical resources in their homes. Because disadvantaged students are more likely than other students to be learning remotely this year, achievement gaps may well have widened in the wake of the pandemic.

The arguments for waiving testing this spring are more persuasive. That’s because the state tests mandated by NCLB and ESSA have a very narrow purpose: to hold schools accountable for student performance. They are not designed to identify what individual schoolchildren know and can do with any specificity, and the results are made available to teachers and parents long after they are of any use in modifying instruction in the current year. Teachers are the best judges of what their students know and can do, and teacher-developed assessments — perhaps supplemented by standardized formative assessments — are the best tools for matching students with the resources they need to fill in gaps in their skills and knowledge.

Related: States will soon be free to transform standardized testing, but most won’t

There will be opportunities in the near future to assess the pandemic’s consequences on student learning. The federal National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, has already been rescheduled from its planned start date this month to January 2022, at which point thousands of students across the country in grades 4 and 8 will be assessed in reading and mathematics. This assessment — which has no stakes for schools, teachers or students — will cover all 50 states, with particular attention to 27 large urban school districts.

Proposing to resume universal standardized testing in America’s public schools, while relaxing the accountability provisions these tests support, is foolhardy. Accountability is all that those tests are designed for. For the past two decades, the tests mandated by NCLB and ESSA have driven classroom instruction.

Reinstating testing now, as the pandemic continues, is tantamount to saying, “Don’t think about elephants!” The elephant of testing will still be in the room.

Aaron Pallas is Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He has also taught at Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University, and Northwestern University, and served as a statistician at the National Center for Education Statistics in the U.S. Department of Education.

This story about standardized testing was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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If I ever try to write a memoir, you have my permission to slap me. There are so many ways that things can go wrong, and just a few in which they go right.

Do I have the standing to generate interest in my story? Do I have anything interesting to say? Can I weave a tale that links my life to the things I care about?

All rhetorical questions, as I have no intention of taking electronic pen to paper. But I do read memoirs—most recently, How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation’s Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education (2018), by Arne Duncan.

The 53-year-old Duncan has been, in my view, the most influential of the 11 Secretaries of Education since the founding of the U.S. Department of Education in 1980.

That’s not necessarily a compliment. Mr. Chips was influential. So was Walter White of Breaking Bad.

These references to fictional characters are not incidental. In How Schools Work, Duncan traffics in fictions, but with just enough truth to carry along the unsuspecting reader. Much of what you hear about education is a lie, he argues. We should believe Duncan because his personal story demonstrates that he cares about kids. His words convey that he is folksy, caring, sincere and misunderstood.

Related: Did Arne Duncan bring American education, ‘kicking and screaming,’ into the 21st century?

I don’t doubt that Duncan cares about children and youth, and his attention to their well-being in this account is much more persuasive than those in the memoirs of Joel Klein or Michelle Rhee, colorful school reformers often mentioned in the same breath as Duncan. The chapter of his book devoted to gun violence and gun control is particularly compelling. But the personal travelogue he recounts, tracing his origins in Chicago through his tenure as the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools and then U.S. Secretary of Education, and into the present day, doesn’t add up to much.

Regrets? He’s had a few, but not too many. And even these lack much self-reflection. He’s not a politician, he admits, but he has strong opinions about public policy, bolstered mainly by vignettes and anecdotes. A good story goes a long way, and issues often rise or fall on the policy agenda as much on the basis of stories as on hard evidence.

This is the essential contradiction of Arne Duncan: He claims to be driven by data, but he prefers a good story.

After graduating from Harvard, Duncan played professional basketball in Australia, and upon his return to Chicago, worked for the Ariel Foundation, which offered programming based on Eugene Lang’s “I Have a Dream Foundation.” Similar to Lang’s approach, the Ariel Foundation offered support, mentoring, and paying the cost of postsecondary education for a cohort of sixth-graders at a Chicago elementary school. The vast majority of these youth graduated from high school, which Duncan describes as “intensely gratifying.” (Unfortunately for Duncan, the What Works Clearinghouse operated by the U.S. Department of Education has found no evidence demonstrating the model’s effectiveness.)

Related: Evaluating teachers: Precise but irrelevant metrics?

Later, when he joined the Chicago Public Schools at the invitation of Mayor Richard Daley, he became enamored of a high school program called “After School Matters,” championed by Mayor Daley’s wife, Maggie. Duncan recounts his efforts to win over an “old-school” principal who didn’t think the program would work. The program “was an immediate success,” he tells us, and the principal came to see “hundreds of kids flock to the program,” and “how important it was to them.” Over the years, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, After School Matters has served over 200,000 Chicago teens. (A careful evaluation sponsored by the Wallace Foundation found some positive effects on youth development, but no detectable effects on school performance or job skills. No matter: “I knew in my heart that afterschool programs mattered,” Duncan tells us.)

Then, as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Duncan decided to close three low-performing elementary schools. He laments that his tenure in Chicago will be remembered for this more than for creating community schools, increasing access to Advanced Placement classes in high schools, and raising the high school graduation rate by 12 percentage points. There is a dramatic retelling of his efforts to persuade parents that closing these schools was the right thing to do.

Once again, the story has a happy outcome. After the schools were closed, they reopened under new leadership and improved rapidly. Over time, “the angriest parents from these first three closures became some of our staunchest allies,” Duncan asserts. (Just a decade later, Chicago closed 49 elementary schools, and research found that closing the schools had a long-term negative effect on the math scores of students from closed schools, and a smaller, negative short-term effect on their reading test scores.)

Finally, as U.S. Secretary of Education, Duncan determined to visit every state and see schools and communities that got little attention. He recounts a trip to Carrolton, Georgia, a poor, predominantly white community west of Atlanta. The home of Southwire, a large company producing electrical cabling and wire, Carrolton started a program called 12 for Life designed to boost the high school graduation rate. Pointing to the decline in the county’s dropout rate, Duncan proclaims: “It’s a model that works, and it’s been replicated across Georgia and has also been the subject of a Harvard Business School study.” (A federal evaluation found no effects of 12 for Life on students’ grade-point averages, the number of suspensions or the number of school dropouts.)

Related: Lessons of nope: Joel Klein fails to educate us on how to fix our schools

Duncan devotes three of the 10 chapters in his book to the Race to the Top competition, the basis for my claim that he has been the most influential Secretary of Education in American history. This competition propelled many states to alter their education laws and policies to bolster their chances of feeding at a $4.4 billion federal trough in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Even states that ultimately were not awarded Race to the Top funds bent their policies toward the competition’s priorities. What a brilliant stroke! Even the chance of a carrot had the desired effect! (A federally funded evaluation concluded that, because academic performance in the states that won awards was already trending upward at the time of the awards, the effect of Race to the Top on students’ academic learning was unclear.)

A key Race to the Top priority was breaking down the firewall that separated teacher evaluations from direct measures of student learning. As a practical matter, this involved rating teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores, often via “value-added” statistical techniques designed to isolate a teacher’s effect on student academic performance. Duncan was—and remains—persuaded that “great” teachers who raise their students’ test scores make a huge difference in their life chances. (I lost track of the number of times that Duncan describes a teacher or school as “great.” Repetition of this word, so common in the reform lexicon, is not a virtue.) It’s a small leap to conclude that a great teacher is defined by the ability to raise test scores.

But is that what makes a “great” teacher? A good chunk of How Schools Work is a love letter to Arne’s mother, Sue Duncan, who founded a children’s center on the South Side of Chicago in 1961 that to this day offers afterschool and summer programs to African-American children and youth. She’s an extraordinary educator, and Arne Duncan’s experience in and around the center helped mold the educator and leader he would become. Sue Duncan’s “main currency,” though, was not the teaching of literacy or mathematics, but “love.”

Related: COLUMN: Just how many ineffective teachers are out there?

“Nowhere did she mention academics” in her basic motto, Arne Duncan tells us. She made a difference in kids’ lives through how she cared for them—to the point of bringing 25 pounds of apples and three pounds of cheese to the center every day so that children would not be hungry—and made them feel loved.

But there’s no evidence that Sue Duncan boosted children’s test scores. Would the value-added models that Arne Duncan finds so seductive have identified his mother as a “great” teacher? I really doubt it. And that in no way is a knock on Sue Duncan, whose personal ethic, like that of many teachers, emphasized care. Rather, it exposes the contradictions of Arne Duncan’s thinking about the work of teaching. What or whom would he believe—the data, or his lyin’ eyes?

Duncan’s story concludes with a chapter that promises much more than it can deliver. Echoing the book’s title, the final chapter, “How Schools Work,” doesn’t even pretend to tell us that. Rather, it is a call to action, seeking to generate a sense of urgency about American school reform. There’s little connection between the chapter and what precedes it, and the message is muddled.

On the one hand, Duncan asks us to acknowledge that our K-12 public education system is no better than middle-of-the-pack on key performance metrics, and that our relative standing in the world has fallen dramatically since the 1980s. Perhaps he doesn’t remember the “rising tide of mediocrity” chronicled by the National Commission on Excellence in Education in its 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk.”

On the other hand, Duncan seeks to stir up some enthusiasm for school reform, so he is obliged to argue that it is working. Over the past four decades, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have risen, even as more and more children of color populate American schools. High school graduation rates are at an all-time high, and college-going and completion rates have also risen sharply.

Related: Duncan vs. Duncan

It’s a puzzling policy argument. Policy analysts tell us that the best way to elevate an issue on the policy agenda is to use quantitative data to demonstrate that there’s a shortfall in some desired outcome; that the problem is getting worse; that it affects a large or important fraction of the population; and that it resonates with widely held values or beliefs. Arguing that things have been getting better—in fact, improving since long before the reforms of the last decade—allows “stay the course” to be as plausible a response as something bolder.

I guess Arne Duncan is right: He really isn’t a politician.

This story about school reform was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

Aaron Pallas is the Arthur I. Gates Professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He has also taught at Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University and Northwestern University, and served as a statistician at the National Center for Education Statistics in the U.S. Department of Education.

The post OPINION: Arne Duncan, the fallible narrator appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Growing up, I was a fan of the comic strip Spy vs. Spy, a staple in Mad Magazine. The strip featured two cold-war era spies, one dressed in white and the other in black, who sought to outwit one another. Usually one spy would best the other, but occasionally their plans would go awry, and both would be blown up.

That’s fine for a comic strip in a humor magazine, but lately it’s been hitting closer to home here in the real world, as the chaotic Trump administration issues incendiary executive orders and then accuses the incredulous senators who oppose them of wanting to start World War III.

It’s even a legitimate fear about the U.S. public education system—one that the past 24 hours has done little to quell, particularly since President Trump’s Education Secretary choice, billionaire Betsy DeVos, was approved 12-11 Tuesday by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP).

A day earlier, HELP released written responses from DeVos to questions posed to her by committee members. Her oral confirmation testimony earlier this month was a cringe-worthy performance, featuring guns vs. grizzlies and her refusal to commit to the same accountability standards for charter and private schools as are in place for traditional public schools that receive taxpayer funds.

Related: Was the DeVos confirmation hearing a dream or a nightmare? Pallas weighs in

DeVos’ remarks at the hearing fueled an unusually fierce opposition throughout the country, stemming from her track record of supporting initiatives at odds with many citizens’ conceptions of public education and civil rights.

The written testimony was an opportunity to rehabilitate herself in the eyes of the committee, especially Democratic senators rightly skeptical of her qualifications.

Her responses to 137 questions from ranking Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington spanned 62 pages. But I am not reassured.

Although there were more bright spots in the relatively polished written testimony than in her awkward oral testimony, DeVos remained evasive, and did little to address fears that she is a thoughtless proponent of the privatization of American education.

If her actions in office parallel her responses to the Senate HELP Committee, we’re in for a rocky four years.

Reading Senator Murray’s questions and nominee DeVos’ answers, I was reminded of Spy vs. Spy. In this case, though, it’s Staffer vs. Staffer.

During the live theater of the confirmation hearing, Senators had the benefit of their staffers in preparing questions, but DeVos was all alone, leading to her infamous “guns vs. grizzlies” remarks and a few others that I’m sure she’d like to forget.

But in responding to written questions, both sides had the benefit of staffers. Senator Murray’s staffers sought to pin down DeVos on a range of policy issues, and set a few traps for her.

Related: Five misconceptions about Michigan education and Betsy DeVos

In turn, nominee DeVos’ staffers wrote answers that allowed her to be maddeningly vague on whether she would continue to support Obama-era education policies, and also on what she might do differently.

It turns out that it’s just as easy for Betsy DeVos to write “If I am confirmed, I look forward to working with you” as it is for her to say it.

As I see it, here’s the good, the evasive, and the very, very bad.

The good:  Some of  DeVos’ responses reflected good rhetoric and, possibly, good policy. The good rhetoric largely consisted of  her commitment to safe and supportive learning environments for all children, regardless of their age or social characteristics—effective perhaps because she borrowed some of it from other sources.

“Simply put, let’s share best practices which encourage students to be kind, civil, and treat everyone with dignity and respect,” she wrote, followed shortly thereafter by “I believe prejudice and intolerance are unacceptable and un-American.”

As for policy, Senator Murray asked a lot of questions about civil rights and the protection of racial and ethnic minority students. DeVos agreed that the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has a role in helping to ensure that the (yet-unfulfilled) mandate of Brown vs. Board of Education be achieved, and said that if  confirmed, she would support OCR in enforcing the various titles of the Civil Rights Act, including investigating and responding to evidence alleging disparate impacts on students.

DeVos also pledged to increase representation of women and minorities pursuing STEM careers and called for the use of “reliable data, strong research and rigorous evaluations” as a basis for programmatic decision-making. And she indicated that she would recommend that Trump continue a White House Initiative on  HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities).

Finally, in the context of questions about higher education, she responded, “Fraud should never be tolerated. Period. Bad actors clearly exist—in both public and nonpublic institutions—and when we find them, we should act decisively to protect students and enforce existing laws.”

(Murray’s staffers had baited DeVos’ with a question about students defrauded by Trump University who received some money back in a $25 million settlement, prompting DeVos’ staffers to note that “Trump University was not a recipient of federal student aid, nor an accredited college or university, and therefore would not fall under my jurisdiction as Secretary of Education.”)

Related: Five misconceptions about Michigan education and Betsy DeVos

The evasive: Some amount of deflection in responding to pointed questions is inevitable. In some cases, DeVos may not have figured out her position yet on various questions, some of which were overly-specific, and a bit unfair. I didn’t find it unreasonable for her to decline to commit to specific current regulations under ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) that she might seek to modify or change.

The most evasive language, in my view, emerged in response to questions about school and college accountability. DeVos was reluctant to commit to strong federal efforts to ensure that all schools will be held accountable. Asked about financial risks posed by charter schools with relationships to Charter Management Organizations, many of which are for-profit, she dodged the issue, responding merely that she would work to “hold schools accountable for educating students.”

And after ducking Senator Tim Kaine’s (D-Virginia) question about equal accountability for all schools receiving federal funds four times in person, she’s said nothing to clarify her position.

DeVos was also evasive in answering questions about applicants to the charter school her husband founded.

We know that urban charter schools enroll a lower percentage of students with disabilities than nearby traditional public schools, and frequently have a lower percentage of English Language Learners as well. Across the nation, charter schools do not serve all children, contrary to her remarks.

DeVos was least forthright on her family’s investments and politicking.

She never answered a question of whether she had personally or through any foundation, PAC or other entity she’s affiliated with ever donated to the Family Research Council, which has been designated a hate-group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“As I said at my hearing, I fully embrace equality and believe in the innate value of every single human being,” she said.

Is that a “Yes”? It’s certainly not a “No.”

When Senator Murray asked, “Have you or anyone in your family ever invested in, owned, served as a high-level executive or board member for, or in any other way been financially involved with a for-profit college?,” DeVos responded that she had never served as a high-level executive or board member of any for-profit college.”

If a question such as this is appropriate for a Cabinet secretary nominee—as Senator Murray argued strongly today—I’d deem that answer non-responsive.

What is DeVos hiding?

The really, really bad. Most disturbing was DeVos’ blind support for virtual charter schools, which have a horrible track record. Senator Murray’s staffers noted recent research on the abysmal academic performance of virtual charter schools, and DeVos flatly denied the evidence.

“High quality virtual charter schools provide valuable options to families, particularly those who live in rural areas where brick-and-mortar schools might not have the capacity to provide the range of courses or other educational experiences for students,” she wrote.

She then pointed to seven virtual academies with four-year cohort graduation rates of 90% or above: Idaho Virtual Academy (90%); Nevada Virtual Academy (100%); Ohio Virtual Academy (92%); Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy (91%); Texas Virtual Academy (96%); Utah Virtual Academy (96%); and Wisconsin Virtual Academy (96%).

These numbers seemed awfully high to me, especially in a sector where high-quality research suggests that the schools on average are just awful. Because I have trust issues, I went to some state education department websites to see what they had to say about these high schools. The disparity between DeVos’ claims and the state department websites is striking.

The Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy High School was given a D by the state of Oklahoma on its A-to-F Report Card for 2015-16, based partly on its 40% cohort graduation rate.

The Ohio Virtual Academy received an F for its Graduation Rate component due to a 53% rate of graduation in four years.

The Nevada Virtual Academy has a 2015-16 graduation rate of 67%. Utah Virtual Academy’s 2016 graduation rate was just  42%. The Idaho Virtual Academy’s 2015 rate is only 33%.

I understand that virtual charter schools may have a highly mobile population of students, but in most graduation accounting schemes, students discharged to other schools will be removed from the denominator of the graduation rate, and not count against the school.

The graduation rates for the schools that DeVos named in her written testimony are far below what is acceptable, and not inconsistent with claims about the thoroughly rotten academic performance of virtual charter schools in general.

Why did DeVos identify these schools exemplary? I’ve no idea … but there is one disturbing detail. They are all affiliated with K12.com, a for-profit charter management organization.

“We believe that profitability yields invention, responsiveness, and responsibility,” proclaims the outfit’s website.

And maybe it does. Certainly Betsy DeVos is a believer. She purchased shares of the company in 2002 and 2003, she said in her remarks, but sold them in 2008.

If this blithe repurposing of the false talking points of a low-performing for-profit charter management organization in which she had personally invested is typical of how she will behave in office, I’m disheartened.

Next up, the nomination moves to the full Senate, which is expected to confirm the appointment, and only needs a majority vote, in a Senate with 52 Republicans.

So, I guess that means, welcome Madame Secretary. What, me worry?

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news website focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about higher education.

Aaron Pallas is professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The post OPINION: Senate committee approves Betsy DeVos, “Thoughtless proponent of the privatization of American education” appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Watching C-SPAN puts me to sleep. So I can’t be sure if what I remember about the Senate’s confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos is real, or a dream, or some mixture of the two. What do you think?

Here’s how I remember it:

Senator Lamar Alexander: We’ll start with an introduction by former Senator Joe Lieberman, followed by a brief statement by our nominee. Then the committee members will have the opportunity to ask questions of the nominee, to which she will respond, “We’re looking into that.”

Joseph Lieberman: It’s great to be back in the Senate today to introduce Betsy DeVos for your consideration as the next Secretary of Education. I know that some people are questioning her qualifications. Too many of those questions seem to be based on the fact she does not come from within the education establishment. But, honestly, I believe that today, that is one of the most important qualifications you can have for this job. Betsy DeVos’s ignorance will trump the education establishment’s knowledge. See what I did there?

After leaving the Senate, I became co-chair of an organization called No Labels. Our philosophy is to avoid using obstructive labels like “Republican,” “Democrat,” or “unqualified.”

Senator Alexander: And now, a few words from nominee Betsy DeVos.

Betsy DeVos: I’m honored president-elect Trump has asked me to join his team and I am grateful for his dedication to education. I don’t think he would have given his name to a university if he were not sincere about trying to make the best deal possible with America’s young adults. I think we can all agree that knowledge is good.

My greatest influence was a public school teacher named Elsa Prince. While her students called her Mrs. Prince, to this day, I just call her “Mom.” Or “billionaire Mom.” What kind of a daughter and Republican nominee would I be if I didn’t talk up my mother? Let’s just ignore the fact that the foundation that she and my father founded, whose tax filings list me as a Vice-President, annually makes large contributions to the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as an extremist anti-LGBT group.

If confirmed, I will be a strong advocate for great public schools. But, if a school is troubled, or unsafe, or not a good fit for a child, we should support a parent’s right to choose. There should always be a Plan B. Unless the parent is a woman.

Related: What’s the worst that could happen under new ed Secretary Betsy Devos?

Senator Alexander: Now let’s turn to the questioning. Senator Bennet?

Senator Bennet: What have you learned about the failures of the Detroit public schools and Detroit charter schools that has informed your decision-making as the secretary of education? What went wrong that is going to go right in cities across America as a result of your philosophy about how we ought to move the country forward?

Related: In charter school oversight, as in foreign affairs, trust but verify

Betsy DeVos: Actually I believe there is a lot that has gone right in Detroit and Michigan with regard to charter schools. And since that’s my whole game, I have nothing else to contribute to a discussion about how to improve the public schools that serve 90% of America’s schoolchildren.

Senator Kaine: Should all schools that receive taxpayer funding be required to meet the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act?

Betsy DeVos: Since I have no idea what that federal law is, even though it’s been around since 1975 and is budgeted at about $12 billion per year, I’m going to say that I think that’s a matter that’s best left to the states. I think that is certainly worth discussion and I look forward to discussing it further with you.

Senator Franken: I would like your views on the relative advantage of using assessments to measure proficiency or to measure growth.

Betsy. DeVos: Thank you, Senator, for that question. I think, if I’m understanding your question correctly around proficiency, I would also correlate it to competency and mastery. So that each student is being measured according to the advancement that they’re making in each subject area.

Senator Franken: Well, that’s growth. That’s not proficiency.

Betsy. DeVos: The proficiency is like if they’ve reached a third-grade level for reading, etc.

Related: A top education reformer explains why we need to give Devos a chance

Senator Franken: Well, I’m asking about the debate between proficiency and growth, your thoughts on that. No Child Left Behind focused on proficiency, an arbitrary threshold, which meant that students who were very high performers, and those who will never reach proficiency, get ignored.

Betsy. DeVos: Senator, I’m not on the bubble on this issue. I’m in favor of growth in proficiency. But it would be premature for me to display any knowledge of the difference between the two.

Senator Murray: How do you intend to convince this committee that no entity will feel pressured to purchase, partner, or contract with corporate or nonprofit entities you and your family invested in, should you be confirmed as Secretary?

Betsy DeVos: In accordance with my conversations with the President-Elect, I can commit to you many things over which I will have no control. For example, if confirmed, I can promise that I will repeal the Common Core on my first day – which won’t be a weekend, I can assure you.

Senator Murphy: In the first round of questioning, I asked you if guns have any place in or around schools. Now, I want to ask you instead about grizzly bears. Do you think that grizzly bears have any place in or around schools?

Betsy DeVos: That is best left to locales and states to decide.

Senator Murphy: You can’t say definitively today that grizzly bears shouldn’t be in schools?

Betsy DeVos: I think in schools in neighborhoods with lots of guns – for example, the burning and crime-infested cities that the President-Elect often refers to – I would imagine that there is probably a grizzly bear in the schools to protect from potential guns.

If the question is around grizzly bear violence and the results of that, please know that my heart bleeds and is broken for those families that have lost any individual due to grizzly bear violence. It doesn’t bleed as much as the victims of grizzly bear violence do, of course, and the blood is just a drop in the bucket compared to blood spilled by the victims of gun violence.

Related: The Devos Distraction

Senator Murphy: I can go through a long litany of examples in which people have made their fortune off of public education dollars, like the charter school principal in Orlando who got a $519,000 payout when his school or her school was closed for poor performance. My question to you is, do you support companies and individuals profiting from public education dollars that is essentially taking money away from students to pay salaries for CEOs in return for investors?

Betsy DeVos: Thank you for that question. Let me just say that I have no intention of answering it.

Senator Paul: What’s your favorite color?

Betsy DeVos: I have seen many students benefit from the success of being able to choose a blue school.

Senator Sanders: Would you work with me and others to make public colleges and universities tuition free through federal and state efforts?

Betsy DeVos: Senator, I think that’s a really interesting idea, and it is really great to consider and think about, but I think we also have to consider the fact that there is nothing in life that is truly free.

Senator Sanders: My question is, and I don’t mean to be rude, but do you think if you were not a multibillionaire, that if your family has not made hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to the Republican Party, that you would be sitting here today?

Betsy DeVos: Senator, I think that’s a really interesting idea, and it is really great to consider and think about, but I think we also have to consider the fact that there is nothing in life that is truly free.

The post OPINION: Was the DeVos confirmation hearing a dream or a nightmare? Pallas weighs in appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

As President-Elect Donald J. Trump cozies up to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, I’m reminded of Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum “Trust, but verify.” Barton Swaim has pointed out that the phrase pacified foreign-policy hawks and doves, each of whom focused on one wing of the maxim, not realizing that trust supersedes verification, and vice versa. Translated from the original Russian, Reagan’s use of the phrase annoyed Mikhail Gorbachev, but it didn’t really represent a policy strategy.

Is there a place for “trust, but verify” in education policy? Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, will likely use whatever weapons exist in the federal policy arsenal to expand access to charter schools and private schools, shifting public funds to the private and quasi-private sector. (Charter schools are public schools that are privately managed, typically by nonprofit or for-profit education management organizations.)

Related: What’s the worst that could happen under New Ed Secretary Betsy DeVos? Some scenarios

Historically, charter schools have been viewed as the product of an exchange: autonomy for accountability. Freed from the bureaucratic red tape that stifles innovation, charter schools could adopt new policies and practices to promote student learning and development. And although the mechanisms aren’t always crystal-clear, it’s evident that some charter-school networks have found ways to boost student performance on standardized tests, as well as improve college preparation and enrollment.

It’s the accountability side that is especially worrisome—accountability both for student outcomes and for the stewardship of public dollars. Does the current array of laws and regulations ensure that charter management organizations use public funds responsibly?

Three recent investigations raise questions.

In September 2016, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Education released an audit of both education management organizations (EMOs) and charter management organizations (CMOs), covering the period of July 2011 through March 2013. OIG’s charge was to assess the risk to three offices in the Department of Education: the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, and the Office of Innovation and Improvement.

The audit concluded that “charter school relationships with CMOs posed a significant risk to Department program objectives. Specifically, we found that 22 of the 33 charter schools in our review had 36 examples of internal control weaknesses related to the charter schools’ relationships with their CMOs (concerning conflicts of interest, related-party transactions, and insufficient segregation of duties).” The audit further concluded that the Department of Education did not have adequate internal controls or monitoring procedures to identify and address financial and program performance risks, in part because it delegated this monitoring to state education agencies.

A lack of appropriate oversight can be found in Betsy DeVos’s backyard, Michigan, where legislators repealed a cap on charter schools in 2011. A Detroit Free Press investigation published in August 2016 found that 61 percent of the 370 charter schools in Michigan had contracted with full-service, for-profit EMOs. The report linked this configuration to a series of excesses, including conflicts of interest, outlandish severance packages and poor spending decisions, all undertaken with minimal public scrutiny. The lack of regulation of the charter sector in Michigan is why I and others have referred to the state, and the city of Detroit in particular, as the “Wild West.” The Michigan legislature has rebuffed efforts to promote transparency in its charter school finances and management agreements.

Related: Betsy DeVos may push vouchers — but how would that impact students with the greatest needs?

More recently, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer released a financial audit of the city’s largest and best-known CMO, Success Academy, concluding that the network kept poor records and couldn’t document the provision of services for which it was billing the city. Success Academy is polarizing; its students generate extraordinarily high test scores while adhering to a strict behavioral regimen not to everyone’s taste. The ambitious founder and CEO of Success Academy, Eva Moskowitz, found a sympathetic audience in former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who bent over backwards to co-locate Success Academy schools within traditional public schools. In some cases, these co-locations have been congenial; in others, the communities associated with the traditional public schools have felt they were being squeezed out by the Success schools.

Despite the fanfare, I don’t think Stringer’s audit of Success Academy is a huge deal. There certainly may be some undocumented expenditures and/or some overcharges; and if these hold up under scrutiny, Success Academy should be held accountable and make appropriate restitution. But the scale of the disputed expenditures doesn’t strike me as grand; nor do such disputed expenditures point to gaping holes in financial management. Any large organization is going to have some transactions that slip through existing management controls. Charter school proponents in New York City are quick to point to the many scandals in the city’s Department of Education where funds have been misused or embezzled, or management protocols evaded, and they’re right: public management doesn’t inoculate an education system against corruption or sloppiness.

Related: Finland can teach Betsy DeVos a thing or two about valuing teachers and school choice that’s real

Still, the Success Academy response to the audit was at once combative and defensive, a common stance for the CMO, but one that often seems disproportionate. Part of its 27-page reply to the 31-page Preliminary Draft Report, incorporated in the Final Report, was devoted to crowing about how well-managed the Success Academy network of charter schools is. “Success Academy’s board members and supporters are among the most sophisticated and highly respected business men and women in the world,” they wrote. “Eight board members are currently CEOs, seven have founded non-profits, and 11 have founded companies. Collectively, they manage more than $103 billion in assets.”

Impressive, to be sure. But do these credentials ensure adequate financial oversight?

Ask the faculty and staff of the College of New Rochelle in New York, an independent college with roots in the Catholic Church. In November, the college revealed that it had unmet fiscal obligations of more than $31 million due to inaccurate accounting records and budgets. The president of the college’s board of trustees was quoted as saying, “The board not only discovered errors in fiscal management, we discovered institutional practices, policies and procedures that have been ineffective, at best, and demoralizing at worst.” The institution has been running at a deficit of approximately $6 million per year for about six years, and is behind $20 million in payroll taxes owed to the IRS and the state of New York. It began cutting its budget and laying off staff almost immediately, but the pain won’t end any time soon. Given the financial exigency, further budget reductions and layoffs of tenured faculty are expected.

The trustees of the College of New Rochelle include the captains of industry who populate the boards of nonprofit institutions. Among their number are the former Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Consolidated Edison; the Global Head of Banking and Securities at Deloitte; a Managing Director of Prime Finance at Citigroup Global Markets; the Vice President for Human Resources, Systems & Technology, and Integrated Supply Chain at IBM; and the Presidents and Chief Executives of several successful privately held corporations. Much as is true of the board members at Success charter schools, these are people who know their way around a balance sheet. But their credentials didn’t preclude the current crisis.

Boards can exercise varying levels of oversight of internal operations. At the College of New Rochelle, President Judith Huntington, who resigned in October in her sixth year in office, was a certified public accountant and had worked at KPMG, the College’s external auditor, before arriving as Vice President of Financial Affairs in 2001. Perhaps her qualifications led the Board not to probe as deeply as they could have into New Rochelle’s revenues and expenditures.

Related: Will “school choice on steroids” get a boost under a Trump administration?

And one wonders if something similar may be happening at Success Academy, where the sparkling test scores, coupled with Eva Moskowitz’s force of personality, might lead its board not to look too carefully under the hood. Other than lending their names (and perhaps dollars) to Success Academy, what do Success board members do? Well, according to their response to NYC Comptroller’s audit, they don’t vote. “As no motions, proposals, resolutions, or other matters were voted on at any Board committee meeting in fiscal years 2013, 2014, and 2015, no committee meeting minutes were required under either NYS Open Meetings Law or Success Academy’s bylaws,” the response states.

I don’t doubt the seriousness or good intentions of Success Academy board members—just as I don’t question the commitments of Success’s teachers and school leaders, some of whom I’ve had the privilege of teaching. But I do worry about gaps in the fabric of public accountability. It’s too easy for people to conclude that somebody else is responsible for oversight. If charter school authorizers assume that the boards of individual charter schools are exercising a fiduciary responsibility, and the boards assume that it’s the authorizers’ role to do so, who’s minding the store?

Related: Ahead of Betsy Devos’s confirmation hearings, some thoughts on why the face of school choice belongs to parents, not politicians

As Betsy DeVos faces a confirmation hearing on January 17th, it’s worth asking her: When federal, state and local dollars follow students to private and charter schools, what is the government’s role in—responsibility for—ensuring that these funds are used appropriately? Is trust enough? Or should we verify?

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news website focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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New York—Thanksgiving is, of course, about giving thanks, while being mindful of an America that has not always treated people fairly. This year, there is a lot to take stock of, as President-elect Donald Trump, in the midst of populating his cabinet, selected Elisabeth (Betsy) DeVos to be his Secretary of Education.

I’ve been joking that Ben Carson – Trump’s pick to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development – primary qualification is that he grew up in a house. But Betsy DeVos attended private schools and sent her children to them.

Her qualification to be Secretary of Education? She doesn’t even have that going for her.

So what’s the worst that could happen? This question has two distinct connotations. On the one hand, asking “What’s the worst that could happen?” may be a way of sidestepping catastrophic thinking, a common feature of psychological anxiety in which people systematically and irrationally overstate the likelihood of a negative event.

Related: President Elect Trump selects Betsy DeVos as new education secretary, ushering in a new era

Psychologists treating individuals with this kind of negative thought distortion will help them to challenge the distortions, and to substitute an alternative, rational thought. In this context, asking “What’s the worst that could happen?” is a way of sensitizing people to the fact that the worst-case scenario hasn’t happened to others they know, and is extremely unlikely to happen to them, too.

That’s why I decided to take a hard look at two distinctly possible scenarios of “What’s the worst that could happen?” under a federal Department of Education led by Betsy DeVos.

Scenario #1: DeVos moves quickly to implement President-Elect Trump’s plan to use $20 billion of federal funds for block grants to states to support vouchers for poor children to attend private schools. With support from the Republican majority in Congress, she zeroes out the $15 billion currently allocated to Title I, the federal program devoted to providing equal access to primary and secondary education, particularly for children in poverty. The new initiative has incentives for states to treat the block grants solely as a funding stream and to provide minimal oversight of the schools that students attend with the voucher funds.

As he did on the campaign trail, President-elect Trump calls on states to buttress this $20 billion with $110 billion from their own coffers. His powers of persuasion are great; early successes in the administration give states the confidence that this is a good investment, and they reallocate their budgets to create this larger pool of $130 billion to provide a voucher of approximately $12,000 for every school-aged child in poverty in the U.S. At the state level, funds that were targeted for local education agencies are diverted to vouchers for individual children, a sharp loss in the funding that states historically have provided to school districts.

Money is siphoned from traditional public schools and towards a diverse array of unregulated for-profit and private providers. School quality takes a back seat to marketing, as the only measure of success is a school’s ability to attract students who bring public dollars with them. Schools rely on ridiculous marketing ploys, advertising “themes” and practices designed to draw students.

Related: The other college kids: They hold jobs and worry about costs, and what they think of President Trump might surprise you

For example, a private or charter school might advertise its behavioral practices. “The handshake represents the quintessential spirit of [our school],” one might read on a school’s website. “It’s the attribute that leaves an indelible impression upon the business leaders, dignitaries and visitors we’re privileged to host almost daily. But we don’t encourage our students to shake hands just to impress—it goes beyond the first impression to instill an attitude of respect when meeting. Giving students the opportunity to practice this important American cultural norm gives our students the edge in college and in life. In addition, showing respect to our guests models our core values and the more we practice it, the more ingrained into our nature it becomes.”

(This quote, by the way, is taken from the website of the West Michigan Aviation Academy, a charter school founded by Betsy DeVos’ husband Dick. Unlike many charter schools in Michigan, its students are doing pretty well academically.)

Across the country, millions of children enroll in schools whose primary mission is to sustain a flow of dollars, not provide an excellent education. Almost overnight, the percentage of students enrolled in private schools triples from 10 percent to 30 percent, and the percentage enrolled in charter schools triples from 6 percent to 18 percent.

Coupled with a steady state of 3 percent homeschooling, for the first time in American history, a majority of school-aged children are not enrolled in traditional public schools. States have no consistent mechanisms for holding private schools, charter schools, and homeschooling families accountable for student performance, and American achievement spirals downward.

The shift of funds away from public school districts creates further stresses on traditional public schools. They are deprived of longstanding resources that compensate for the unwillingness of most states to provide adequate levels of funding for those districts that lack the capacity to raise enough money from local property tax revenues.

Related: Schoolchildren “have a lot of questions and a lot of fear” in aftermath of Trump victory

As traditional public schools wither and close, more and more families are drawn to the unregulated private sector.

The loss of funds for traditional public schools makes teaching less attractive, and existing teachers leave the field in droves. Enrollment in teacher preparation programs plummets; these programs are unable to provide a sufficient supply of replacement teachers for local school districts, even as fewer teachers are needed.

The unregulated charter and private school sectors hire individuals with no formal preparation or commitment to teaching, and these schools function as revolving doors. Lacking a stable teaching force, even those private and charter schools aspiring to help their teachers develop professionally are stymied.

Then there are the consequences of the federal voucher plan for global warming—I actually do have a story about that—but let me stop there…

Scenario #2: DeVos moves quickly to implement President-Elect Trump’s plan to use $20 billion of federal funds for block grants to states to support vouchers for poor children to attend private schools. But she tussles with Congress over where the money is to come from. Though many Republican leaders are sympathetic to smaller government, they do not want to revisit the three-year process of reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The resulting Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed by President Obama in 2015 after 86 percent of House members and 88 percent of voting Senators supported it.

Congress historically has bristled when the Executive Branch has sought to do an end run around what it views as its authority. (I’m talking to you, former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.)

As DeVos goes out on the stump to promote the plan and to gain state support, she finds considerable resistance at the state level. Her previous successes in promoting choice and privatization via targeted campaign contributions to state legislators in selected states don’t transfer to the broader national playing field.

Though she is able to secure the support of wealthy donors who support free markets and deregulation, the state-level appetite for vouchers is spotty. Even in her home state of Michigan, where she chaired the state Republican Party, she was unsuccessful in promoting legislation for vouchers for students to attend private schools.

Although her organization, All Children Matter (ACM), claims a 121-60 record “won-loss” record in state and local legislative races with significant ACM involvement, that pattern has not resulted in states adopting plans which provide vouchers for students to attend private schools. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that 13 states and the District of Columbia have state-funded school voucher plans. But in seven of those states, eligibility is limited to students with disabilities or students residing in districts that do not operate any public schools.

Failing to make much headway on vouchers, and wasting valuable time denouncing the Common Core standards still supported by most states, DeVos regroups. She develops Race to the Top 2.0, a federal program with incentives for schools to expand statewide caps on charter schools, and wooing states with heightened flexibility in implementing the provisions of ESSA. As was true for the original Race to the Top, the program has virtually no consequences for the number of private schools in a state or their enrollments.

Related: In segregated classrooms, students struggle to understand a Trump victory

Many states submit applications, thrilled at the opportunity to be able to customize their ESSA implementation plans to local conditions. Congress grumbles, but the program goes forward. States with existing regulation of the charter sector, though, are reluctant to relinquish their controls.

Governors, state legislators, and state education departments must contend with voters, egged on by national and local teacher unions, who are wary that charter school expansion might rob traditional public schools of necessary resources. Some of the resulting expansion is in the form of virtual charter schools providing online instruction to students who might not otherwise have access to the curricula and courses they desire.

The rhetoric coming from the President-elect and Secretary DeVos is sharp and nasty, bashing “failing government schools” and the teachers who support and work in them. Teachers are demoralized, and there is a drop in applications to teacher preparation programs across the country.

Progress on the privatization agenda is thus incremental and segmented, with the greatest strides in states that were already predisposed to vouchers and charter school expansion.

Homeschooling increases at a much faster rate than private and charter school enrollments. By the year 2020, 5 percent of school-aged children are home-schooled, 10 percent are enrolled in charter schools, and the percentage of students in private schools has fallen to 8 percent.  More than three-quarters of American children and youth are enrolled in traditional public schools.

Federal education policy has a bounded impact; global warming remains a grave problem.

Here, then, are two different scenarios for “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Although I began with the disabling features of anxiety, there are individuals for whom imagining the worst is deeply ingrained not as a thought distortion, but rather as a worldview emerging from personal experience. My in-laws, for example, were both survivors of the Holocaust.

In the years following, as they tried to reconstruct a sense of a “normal life,’ they saw the world as an extremely dangerous place, and sought to protect their children from countless bad events that were unlikely to occur. (A case in point: Last week, my wife told her mother, who is hanging in there at the age of 95, that she took the train from New York City to Washington, DC for a conference. “By yourself?! Without Aaron?!” she exclaimed. Apparently my very presence can ward off danger.)

So, there we have it with new education secretary DeVos. What’s the worst that could happen?

Scenario #1 represents catastrophic thinking. Scenario #2 is a more realistic projection, in my view, intended as a counter to the exaggerated features of Scenario #1. But how much more realistic is it? After all, I didn’t expect to be referring to Donald Trump as the President-elect today.

So, Doctor. Shall we get started?

This story was reported by The Hechinger Report, an independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education

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America, we learned Tuesday night, remains deeply divided on a vision for our future. Not much new about that, but the nature of President-elect Trump’s candidacy, campaign and election represents a discontinuity, as America had never seen a campaign or a candidate like him before in a presidential race.

I’ve looked at President-elect Trump’s campaign website, and read the speeches he’s given that mentioned K-12 education. There’s a basic theme: America spends a great deal on K-12 education, but our results are mediocre, making us less competitive with other countries. The major impediment to success is failing government schools that African-American and Hispanic children in the inner cities attend. The solution is giving families with poor children federal and state dollars that will enable them to attend the school of their choice. School choice is the civil rights issue of our time.

There’s not much more. Trump is also on record opposing the Common Core voluntary curricular standards adopted by most states (with some federal encouragement) and supporting merit pay for teachers, though he has not proposed a specific initiative.

Related: After shocking election, New York history teacher tries to alleviate despair-anxiety-indignation

The engine of the Trump school-choice policy agenda is reallocation of $20 billion in the federal budget for block grants, with incentives for states to serve the one million schoolchildren living in “absolute poverty” by promoting private and public school choice, magnet schools, and charter schools, with options for the money to follow the child to his or her school. He has called on states to contribute an additional $110 billion of their own education budgets toward school choice, with the goal of providing approximately $12,000 in school-choice funds to “every K-12 student who today lives in poverty.”

Where will this $20 billion come from? Where will states strapped for cash find the additional $110 billion in their own coffers to add to this pool of support? There’s no blueprint for the federal contribution—not even a sense of whether these funds will be “reprioritized” from within the federal Education Department, or whether the President-elect proposes to cannibalize funds from other agencies. As for the state allocation, Trump seems to be relying on the power of persuasion. In his one education-focused campaign speech, delivered at a charter school in Cleveland, Ohio, in September, he said, “I will use the pulpit of the presidency to campaign for this in all 50 states. And I will call upon the American people to elect officials at the city, state and federal level who support school choice.”

But persuasion doesn’t create dollars, and that’s the big missing link between the bully pulpit of Presidential support and the reallocation of huge chunks of state education budgets in response. We can’t even get states and local school districts to follow their own laws on school funding, let alone make massive reallocations. Could this actually happen during the short-term horizons that frame most politicians’ behavior?

Related: Educators ponder meaning of Trump presidency: Plea for the vulnerable, bullied

The same is true for the challenges of expanding school choice. Do good schools have lots of empty seats? If that were true, perhaps we could solve the problem simply by funding poor children to attend them. But most schools that are regarded as successful are oversubscribed, and the paths to expansion include adding more students to them, or opening more schools like them, which may be undesirable or take years to occur, respectively.

The model for President-elect Trump’s proposal may be the urban charter schools of Boston and New York City. High-quality research has documented that the economically disadvantaged students who attend oversubscribed charter schools in these communities outperform their counterparts on standardized tests, and students attending Boston’s charter schools are better prepared for college and more likely to enroll.

The evidence on Massachusetts charter schools outside of Boston is not nearly so favorable, and a recent Texas study suggests that charter schools do not increase students’ eventual earnings, and may actually lower them. School choice in general, and the expansion of the charter sector in particular, may or may not work to raise student achievement and close gaps. The type of charter school may matter, with “No Excuses” models seemingly more effective than other models. It’s premature to conclude that the market model underpinning Trump’s school-choice expansion proposal will work as intended.

Related: Polls: Americans increasingly mistrustful of college costs, leadership, and value

There’s an additional wrinkle: Expanding school choice may not be the will of the people. On Tuesday, voters in Massachusetts considered a ballot question that would have allowed officials there to approve up to 12 new or expanded charter schools per year, outside of an existing cap. Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly rejected the ballot proposal, by a vote of 62 percent to 38 percent. Of course, this specific vote may or may not generalize to other choice proposals.

In his school choice speech last month, Trump argued that, with his support, and that of his followers, huge changes were possible. “I’m confident that the politicians will not be able to suppress the will of the people anymore,” he said. “It is too much. Too strong. Eventually, they break. They’re politicians. They always break.”

Related: How can education reform the minds of Trump voters?

It’s a truism that campaigning and governing require different skill sets. What worked on the campaign trail may not be as successful in the Oval Office. This will be a source of frustration for those who supported Trump, and a source of solace for those who did not. One thing is clear, however: With his election to the presidency, Donald J. Trump is now a politician.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news website focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about higher education.

Aaron Pallas is professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University

The post OPINION: The mystery of President-elect Donald J. Trump and his education agenda: ‘There’s not much more’ appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

“What’s that?” he asked. I showed him the screen of my iPad.

“It’s the latest version of the National Council on Teacher Quality’s ratings of teacher education programs. Look!” I said. “The College’s Graduate Secondary Education programs got a D+!”

Bill rolled his eyes. NCTQ has a history of getting things wrong, at Teachers College and elsewhere. Two years ago, NCTQ rated a non-existent undergraduate teacher preparation program at Teachers College, not understanding that Barnard College, Columbia University and Teachers College are independent but affiliated institutions. Things haven’t gotten much better; in its latest report, Path to Teach, NCTQ has a listing for Columbia University, and for Barnard, but not for Teachers College—even though Columbia has no graduate programs in teacher education.

“And look at your program, Bill!” I exclaimed.

Related: The trouble with NCTQ’s ratings of teacher-prep programs

One of the dimensions on which NCTQ rates undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs is their attention to content knowledge. “Will I learn enough about the subject areas I will teach?” is the question that the Path to Teach website asks. For social studies in particular, “Will I learn what I need to be a great social studies teacher?”

Bill’s program got an F—“This program will not require you to take courses that ensure you get the knowledge you need in history, economics and government.”

“Oh, good!” Bill replied. “We’ve got the lowest grade in the College!” (The secondary education programs in math, English and science all got As.)

“You do actually require students to learn something about history, economics and government, don’t you?” I asked.

Bill nodded yes.

Related: Want to be rated ‘highly effective’ in New York? Don’t teach English or math in grades 4-8

The state of New York requires social studies teachers in grades 7-12 to have completed at least 30 undergraduate credits in social studies, including at least 21 in history, and at least one course in economics and one course in civics or political science. If a student enrolls without having met these requirements, he or she must complete this coursework in addition to the other coursework required for graduation from Teachers College before the College can recommend the student for initial state certification.

All of this is on the Teachers College website, and the state’s certification requirements are not exactly a secret. What was NCTQ thinking?

Maybe they were thinking that graduate programs in social studies education mainly consist of a bunch of methods courses that have nothing to do with subject-matter knowledge. That’s true of the Teach For America track in Boston University’s secondary social studies teacher preparation program. Most TFA corps members seeking Massachusetts state certification enroll in a 36-credit master’s degree, which includes courses such as Teaching English Language Learners; General Methods of Instruction; Curriculum and Special Methods for History and Social Science, 5-12; and Special Education: Curriculum and Instruction. Important classes for prospective teachers, to be sure, but not concerned with basic knowledge of history, geography, economics or government. There are no required content-knowledge courses in the social studies Ed.M. program at Boston University, nor in the streamlined 14-credit program for those TFA corps members who want state licensure only.

Related: Did Arne Duncan bring American education, ‘kicking and screaming,’ into the 21st century?

NCTQ also rated the Teach For America program in Massachusetts, giving it an overall A grade for alternate secondary certification. As was true for Teachers College, there’s a rating for content knowledge. “Will the program make sure I know enough about the subject areas I plan to teach?” the Path to Teach website asks. Why, yes! “This program will verify that you have enough knowledge of your subject areas to teach them well.” All of these subject areas collectively are given an A grade.

But how can NCTQ know that the students have the requisite content knowledge? TFA’s website and application materials provide no purchase on corps members’ subject-matter knowledge.

So: The social studies education program at Teachers College, one of the nation’s most well-known graduate schools of education, with clear curricular content requirements, is given a failing grade by NCTQ. An alternative teacher preparation program, Teach For America Massachusetts, with no documented curricular content requirements for any subject area, is given an A.

It’s as if there’s a political agenda.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news website focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about high school reform.

The post NCTQ’s teacher-education ratings deserve an F appeared first on The Hechinger Report.