Did the CREDO study fudge charter school data?

Many charter school supporters are touting a study by Stanford University’s CREDO (Center for Research on Education Outcomes), which claims to document greater academic growth in charter schools than in their public counterparts.

The Louisiana Department of Education was quick to use the study as evidence that we are “among eleven states where charter school performance outpaced traditional public school growth…”

As always with controversial subjects like charter schools, there were conflicting reports about the accuracy of the study. But in a man-bites-dog twist, one of the loudest critics of the new CREDO study is an ardent supporter of charter schools, Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform.

Allen told National Public Radio reporter Claudio Sanchez that CREDO “manipulated data and made conclusions about policy based on that data” that are “absolutely un-credible.”

As Sanchez wrote for this story, “the CREDO study did not compare real kids to real kids. Instead, researchers took selected data and created a ‘composite’ student to represent public school kids.”

As Jeanne Allen put it, "They compared those (charter school) students to students that don't even exist."

Allen told the reporter that it is possible to collect data on individual student achievement over time and create a legitimate study.

“But it takes a lot of patience and money that too many studies have been unable or unwilling to spend to get to that crucial question,” Sanchez wrote. “Are charter school students learning more than kids in traditional public schools?”

As long as the debate over charter schools is based on flawed research apparently aimed at bolstering a political agenda, it won’t be possible to answer that question.

In Louisiana, the politicians and venture capitalists have decided that charter schools and other privatization schemes are the way to improve educational achievement. They are all too happy to use bogus reports to support their cause.

LFT president rails against DOE’s $128 million administrative budget

As the House Appropriations Committee began its study of the state’s $24.7 billion general fund budget on Tuesday, LFT President Steve Monaghan asked members to closely monitor the Department of Educaiton’s $128 million administrative budget.

Monaghan, the only representative of a teacher organization to address the committee, said that many aspects of the department’s budget are problematic. As an example, he cited a “lack of transparency” in the way the department hires highly paid administrators.

“Once upon a time we at least know who was being hired to do what,” Monaghan said. “Now it seems that we discover those things without any rhyme or reason.”

Monaghan noted that funding for public schools through the Minimum Foundation Program has been frozen for the past five years, even as the department brought in minimally qualified administrators at high salaries.

“The department’s priorities seem to be more ideological than instructional,” he said.

Monaghan’s complaint echoed published reports that top hires at the department are being brought in to sell the administration’s privatization and voucher plans at the expense of traditional public schools.

“There was a time when research drove decisions,” Monaghan told the committee. “It doesn’t seem that research is driving decisions now.”

“I bring a message from the classroom that conditions are getting much worse,” Monaghan told lawmakers. “Please be watchdogs and help us with this fight.”

To view Monaghan's testimony, please click here. His testimony begins at about the 2:17:52 mark.

Where do they find these jewels?

First there was the spin person hired out of Florida to help the State Department of Education manage communications (that’s PR-speak for obfuscating the disaster that our education policy has become). Without having to even move to Louisiana, Dierdre Finn, a veteran of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s political machine, has joined the ranks of high-paid DOE apparatchiks.

Then we discovered that the department’s new director in charge of teacher evaluation – which now governs every aspect of a teacher’s career, from tenure to compensation to termination – is Molly Horstman, a 27-year old, non-certified, two-year veteran teacher who did not pass PRAXIS.

Third in this sad clown car of questionable employment decisions is DOE’s new promoter of “course choice” options, motivational speaker Lefty Lefkowith. His chief claim to fame, aside from association with the aforementioned Gov. Bush, seems to have been huckstering for schemes to deregulate energy and manipulate water rights in Florida.

Now into the center ring stumbles newly appointed Deputy Superintendent for District Support Mike Rounds, who will be paid $170,000 per year (hat tip to Tom Aswell for uncovering the story).

Rounds left his last position as chief operating officer for the Kansas City school system under somewhat of a cloud. Aswell’s post describes the sleazy dealings that were uncovered by investigative reporters in KC.

Rounds and Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White have something in common. Both “earned” their superintendent’s credentials by attending the Broad Academy.

The Academy's Web site claims that it takes "executives who have experience successfully leading large organizations and a passion for public service" and, after six weekends of training over a 10-month period, "places them in urban school districts to dramatically improve the quality of education for America’s students."

White taught for two years as a Teach for America volunteer, then went to work as executive director of Teach for America in Chicago. From there, he served a stint as deputy chancellor for New York City schools, where his passion was in closing down public schools and converting them to charters. That wealth of experience bought him passage to Louisiana, where he briefly headed the Recovery School District before, at age 35, he was picked by Gov. Bobby Jindal to replace Paul Pastorek as superintendent.

There is an emerging trend in Louisiana’s education bureaucracy: Minimal professional credentials, little or no experience as an educator, allegiance to an ideology of privatization, disdain for professionals who have chosen education as their life’s calling. And salaries higher than any classroom teacher dare dream of ever earning.

Where do they find these jewels?

Is the state seizure of schools justified?

Schools in the state-run Recovery School District are no longer improving any faster than schools in other large urban school systems, Advocate reporter Charles Lussiere writes in this column.

That is important because State Superintendent of Education John White and his department have touted RSD's previous growth as "justification for expanding its role in Baton Rouge."

Lussiere notes that between 2007 and 2012, student test scores in New Orleans' RSD schools improved faster than the rest of the state.

But in the last year, East Baton Rouge and Jefferson Parish school districts improved at the same rate as the RSD, and increased proficiency at a greater rate than the rest of the state.

Those facts beg many questions that should be answered before state control is exerted in districts outside New Orleans.

Why did RSD schools show a spurt in the years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city? Did it have as much to do with the changing population of that tragic city as with the imposition of state control over the schools?

Have any studies explained that growth and revealed a path to replicate the success elsewhere?

Why has the growth of proficiency in New Orleans RSD slowed, and why has it increased in Baton Rouge and Jefferson?

The seizure of schools by the state is a radical step. It should not be taken unless all those questions and more can be answered in its favor.

Fired Orleans educators get their day in court

Thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina are finally getting their day in court. Virtually all of New Orleans' teachers and school employees were summarily fired after the storm, leaving the way open for the state seizure of schools and the wholesale chartering of public education.

But was the firing of those educators legal? That will be determined in a trial that begins today, according to this article by Times-Picayune reporter John Simeran. The trial could last a month.

The lead attorney in the case, Willie Zanders. Sr., will argue that the terminations violated state law because there was no due process afforded the nearly 7,000 teachers and school employees.

Zanders is asking or lost wages and benefits as well as damages for emotional distress. Defendants include the State of Louisiana, the State Department of Education, the Orleans Parish School Board and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Jindal to Louisiana: Stop whining!

On Friday morning, Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater told the legislature's Joint Budget Committee that there was no decision yet on what must be cut to offset a $108 million budget shortfall that must be balanced by June 30.

Not long after, while the committee meeting was still in progress, Gov. Bobby Jindal called a press conference to lay out the cuts his administration expects from state agencies. Higher education and health care will bear the brunt of the new cuts.

Lawmakers were predictably upset over what they saw as the administration's calculated deception over the cuts, as Advocate reporter Michelle Millhollon wrote here.

Even worse was the governor's cavalier attitude about the state's budget crisis. "We don't need whining," he said, "we do need leadership." Then our leader flew off to yet another state to raise funds for yet another Republican candidate.

What effect will the cuts have? Reporter Jordan Blum documents the approximately $35 million to higher education in this story. More details about LSU's loss are reported by Blum here.

And in this press release from the Department of Education, some $6.3 million in cuts to K-12 are laid out.

Pastorek creates six new high-paid jobs

Apparently not satisfied that his own $400,000+ salary package doesn't tip the education pay scale far enough in the direction of the top bureaucrats, State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek wants to create a whole handful of new department bigwigs.

According to this article by Advocate reporter Marsha Shuler, it's all part of Pastorek's plan to bring Louisiana a "world class" education system.

The six news jobs would be unclassified, meaning that the employees would serve strictly at the pleasure of the superintendent. Pastorek plans to hire three"national experts" at salaries of up to $140,00 each, and three consultants at up to $80,00 each.

These employees will be in addition to the 14 unclassified positions already created by Pastorek - five of them have salaries over $100,000, Shuler reports.

Creation of the positions was approved by the State Civil Service Commission, whose members are appinted by the governor.

As Superintendent Pastorek and Governor Bobby Jindal like to point out when they disburse exorbitant salaries to their at-will employees, you have to pay top dollar to get the best talent.

A tale of two commissions

Most people are probably not even aware that Louisiana has one commission called the Blue Ribbon Commission for Education Excellence, and another one called the Accountability Commission. They have no power to make law or set policy, but they are factories for ideas that can eventually become part of the state’s education laws and policies.

The two commissions don’t always know what the other is up to, and since the news media rarely cover meetings of either one, the public is usually unaware of their activities.

A lot of mischief can be achieved in the dark.

Recently, the Blue Ribbon Commission decided to apply for a $25,000 grant from the National Governor’s Association to fund the search for a “new model for teacher compensation.” The Department of Education will kick in another $25,000 to complete funding for a seven-member research team. Part of the charge to the team will be to develop "policies or identify laws that need to be added or changed and present them to the boards and/or governor."

By May of 2010, this new model will be presented at a joint meeting of the Blue Ribbon Commission and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The Blue Ribbon Commission, by the way, no longer includes members from any of the state’s professional teacher organizations. We can expect little, if any, input from classroom professionals in the creation of this “new model for teacher compensation.”

And just what sort of new model might be envisioned by the project?

This is where one of the budget items in the Department of Education’s consultant wish list comes into play. Superintendent of Education Paul; Pastorek wants to spend $580,000 on exploring the frontier of “Value Added Assessments.”

That’s code for paying teachers based on how their students perform on standardized tests.

Which brings us to the other commission, the Accountability Commission. This one does include representatives of the teacher organizations. The Accountability Commission members have been asked to recommend “growth models” and “value added assessments.”

But the Accountability Commission was not aware of the Department of Education’s request for a $580,000 consultancy fee to find the same information.

And where to all these seemingly unconnected threads of story weave together? Check out the editorial in today’s Advocate. As far as the capital city’s newspaper of record is concerned, the fight over basing teacher pay on test scores is over, and test scores have won: “The reality,” says the editor, “is that an anti-testing agenda, from unions or others in education, is dead.”

Well, as Mark Twain once famously observed, “The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.”