Maybe she was punishing the right principals? Not so clear!

Rhee claims that her new principals are replacing ones who were allowing standardized test scores to go down. She also claims that her new principals are doing much better at raising those test scores than the veteran principals. Much of the media keeps repeating her claims, without actually doing any investigation to see whether these claims are true.

As usual, Rhee’s claims are NOT true.

Two blogs ago, I showed in detail that Rhee’s second claim – that schools under the new principals she has appointed are doing much better – is false. Today, I will show that even by her own criteria, the first claim is false: she’s not even replacing the right principals.

If she were being consistent, then the schools who kept the same principals for SY 2007-8 and SY 2008-9 (that is, the 2 last school years) should all be schools where the test scores were going up over the previous 2 years, namely SY 2006-7 to 2007-8. And the schools where the principals were replaced for 2008-9 should be the ones where the DC-CAS scores were decreasing frum Spring of ’07 to Spring of ’08. (Except for ones where principals passed away or left of their own volition.)

That, however, didn’t happen. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at 2 graphs that compare those two groups of schools.

First, let’s look at the changes in the percentages of students “passing” the reading portion of the DC-CAS from Spring’07 to Spring ’08 at the schools where the principal WAS replaced for SY 2008-9:

As you can see, at a majority of those schools where the principal was replaced, reading test scores were increasing for the 2 school years prior to SY 2008-09. I count 31 out of 45, or about 69%.

Now let’s look at the changes in the proportion of students passing the READING part of the DC-CAS from Spring’07 to Spring ’08 at the schools where the principal was NOT replaced for SY 2008-9, i.e., where the same principal was in charge during ’07-08 and ’08-’09:

Of these schools, where the principals were retained, a substantial portion (11 out of 70) were ones where the proportion of students ‘passing’ the DC-CAS in reading went down from Spring of 2007 to Spring of 2008.

How about in math? Same story or different story? Let’s take a look.

First, let’s look at the changes in the percentages of students “passing” the MATH portion of the DC-CAS from Spring’07 to Spring ’08 at the schools where the principal WAS replaced for SY 2008-9:

Again, at a super-majority of these schools – ones where the principal was replaced last school year – the percentages of students passing the DC-CAS had increased over the two previous years. I count that at 38 out of 45, or 84% of the cases, the math test scores were getting better. (Surely not that many principals can’t be passing away or retiring?)

Now let’s look at the changes in the proportion of students passing the MATH part of the DC-CAS from Spring’07 to Spring ’08 at the schools where the principal was NOT replaced for SY 2008-9, i.e., where the SAME principal was in charge during ’07-08 and ’08-’09:

Other than the colors, I am having a very hard time telling the difference between the two previous graphs. So, as far as the math scores are concerned, how the students at a school did from Spring ’07 to Spring ’08 nade no difference whatsoever as far as the fate of the principal at that school is concerned. And as far as the reading scores are concerned, there is not very much difference between the two groups, either.

So how does Rhee actually decide to fire principals? I have no idea. Her public statements are either so vague that they can’t be checked, or else are false.

Does anybody out there, reading this blog, actually know how she makes decisions? Is it all based on “gut feelings” and conversations with God, as GW Bush2 used to do? Or is it just impulsive behavior? Or what? Regardless of what she and her few remaining acolytes claim, these decisions are not based on real data.

———————————–

In my blog entries over the past few months, I have shown how lots and lots of Rhee’s claims are totally at variance with reality. I am beginning to think that there is something dangerously wrong with the mentality of Michelle Rhee. She has told SO MANY LIES, and in such a bold and utterly confident manner, that it’s really scary. (And the mass media has fallen for almost all of them, without researching the truth behind any of them.) Rhee also said in an interview on public television that she has never done anything that she has ever regretted. Wow. A person who believes that he or she has never made any errors or mistakes is somebody I wouldn’t trust for a minute. Would you?

Anybody out there with a background in psychology: can you give us the clinical diagnosis for this sort of behavior?

Here is exactly what Rhee said about her ‘broom’ policies

Efavorite has collected some quotes from Michelle Rhee proclaiming that her policy of firing veteran principals is working wonders. In yesterday’s blog, I showed that those claims are false. Here are those quotes:

Rhee quotes in July-August ‘09 about her new principals:
“New principals outperform the district average so that says a lot about the talent that we were able to bring into the system.” … “It is one piece of compelling evidence that we’re making the right decisions and that reforms are working.  …If you look at the new principals that we brought in, their achievements gains, in general, across the district, looked really, really strong.”  American University Radio Metro Connection, 7/17/09 wamu.org/programs/mc/09/07/17.php

“Test scores of schools with new principals outscored the District average,” she [Rhee] says. “We did the right thing by replacing principals.”  7/19/09 “Chancellor Rhee settles in for the siege”  “Washington Examiner”, Harry Jaffe http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Chancellor-Rhee-settles-in-for-the-siege-7988873-51052702.html

“If you look at the gains, the academic gains that we’ve seen over the last two years, the data shows that our new principals are actually seeing better than average gains, which means we really have succeeded in bringing in some really, really strong new leaders who are making the difference in our schools.”
8/17/09, PBS Podcast,  “Two Years of Talks with Michelle Rhee & George Parker – Snowball Effect” http://learningmatters.tv/blog/podcasts/michelle-rhee-in-dc-podcast-snowball-effect/2510/

“As part of our aggressive human capital strategy, DCPS recruited over 49 proven instructional leaders for the 2008-2009 school year to replace principals who were unable to increase student performance. Our new principals went on to outperform the district-wide averages on the DC-CAS this year. One of these new principals, Dwan Jordon, assumed leadership last year of Sousa Middle School in Ward 7, one of the city’s highest poverty wards. In just one year he galvanized his staff to move students up 17% points in reading and 25% in math, meeting AYP for the first time in Sousa’s history.”
7/23/09,  “Education Reform in the District of Columbia”  US Senate Testimony of Michelle Rhee, Chancellor, Meeting of the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia, page 7.
http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:Bs-5Zn19PTYJ:hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm%3FFuseAction%3DFiles.View%26FileStore_id%3D5db18d21-1e2c-47ce-bd40-e6aac23e3ff8+Michelle+rhee+engaged&hl=en&gl=us

Thanks, Efavorite!

How well does Rhee’s “Broom” work?

So how well does Rhee’s broom actually work? You know, the one she is supposedly using to get rid of incompetent, veteran* administrators and teachers? To hear her say it, her policy has been a smashing success. But the truth is quite different.

You might remember the 2008 TIME magazine cover with a photo of Michelle Rhee, frowning, dressed in black, holding a broom in a classroom. Some people simply thought it meant that Rhee was an old-fashioned witch, about to get on her broom and ride around. I understand that sentiment, but I suspect that the author of the article meant that Rhee planned to clean out the school system by getting rid of veteran teachers and administrators.

According to Rhee’s numerous public statements, the only thing that really matters is standardized test scores. (Though they are probably the LEAST important things in the lives of most students, and, it is very ironic that Rhee herself is unable to produce any test scores whatsoever backing up her mythical “Baltimore Miracle.”)

Taking this at face value (even though many people have shown that most standardized tests produce little data that is actually valuable), I have done a little bit of analysis to see whether the schools where Rhee fired or replaced the principals actually did better on the DC-CAS than the schools where the principals were not replaced. Recall that Rhee has claimed many times that her approach has been extremely successful. (I was about to say, “a sweeping victory.”)

What I found is that both groups of schools included ones where the scores went up a lot from SY 2007-8 to SY 2008-9, and both groups of schools had members where the scores dropped about as much. To me, using Rhee’s own yardstick, it’s hard to find any big difference between the two groups of schools .

Don’t believe me? Look at the graphs, below.

This first graph, with a light green background, shows the changes in the percentages of students scoring “proficient” or better on the MATH portion of the DC-CAS from SY 2007-8 to SY 2008-9 (that is, from the year before last to last year), at schools that had the same principals both years. Each bar represents a single school, but there was no room to label them all. This is for ALL DC public schools for which there is data for both school years – elementary and secondary, but not charter schools, since Rhee is not in charge of them. I have no way of tracking individual students’ scores. These graphs just give the changes in percentages of students “passing” the DC-CAS.

As you can see, one school increased its percentage of ‘passing’ students by about 43%. In fact, something like 2/3 of these schools showed an increase in the proportion of students passing in math. A couple of schools had declines of around 24% in the percentages of students ‘passing’ the math test.

Now let’s compare that graph with one that shows the progress (or lack thereof) of the counterparts to these schools —  the ones where Rhee put in a new principal for the second year (SY 2008-09, i.e. last school year).

I see three main differences between these two graphs:

• The second graph has a background that is light orange or the color of canned salmon.  The first one has a light green background. (I changed the colors so that you and I can tell them apart; otherwise, it’s pretty tough.)
• The second, light orange graph has fewer bars. That’s simply because more schools kept their principals than had them replaced by Rhee for SY 2008-9.
• One of the bars in the first graph is a lot longer than any of the other ones. That was Birney ES. (Questions were raised by the DC State Board of Education about those scores.)

Now, for the similarities:

• In both graphs, which means in both groups of schools,  somewhere near  1/3 of the schools showed declines from the first year to the second year, because the bars point downwards into negative territory. (Counting and using a calculator, I find that 12 out of 33, or 36% of the schools with NEW principals, had drops in scores; and 24 out of 70, or 34% of the schools that did NOT change principals, had drops in scores. Not a significant difference in my opinion, but if you think it maters, then it’s one that favors the schools that did NOT change principals.)
• The bars are generally very similar in length in the two graphs.
• In both graphs, the scale on the vertical axis is the same, so you can compare the graphs without bias.

So, not really much difference at all in the two groups of schools in terms of changes in math scores. Maybe reading tells a different story? Take a look.

First, changes in reading scores over the same period of time as the other two graphs, in schools that kept the SAME principal for both years:

That graph has sort of a blue-gray background. Notice that about half the schools improved, and a little more than half the schools did worse during the second year. I also estimate that at about 25% to 30% of the schools (the ones near the center), there was very, very little change.

Let’s now look at the changes in reading scores at schools where the principal was REPLACED:

Differences?

• This last graph has a bright yellow background, not a pale blue-gray.
• The bars on this second graph are significantly shorter, both in the positive and in negative directions.
• One bar on the gray graph is a lot taller than any of the other ones. (Guess which school that was!**)
• In the yellow graph, the fraction of schools that did worse the second year (i.e. the ones that have bars pointing downwards) is a bit under one-half, not a bit over one-half. (17 out of 45, or 38% of the schools with new principals had drops in reading scores, versus 37 out of 70, or 53%, for the schools which kept their principals.)
• The fraction of schools that made essentially no change at al, one way or the other, appears to be smaller in the yellow graph.

So, all in all, even on Rhee’s own terms (where the only important thing is standardized test scores) her broom has so far made very, very little difference.

Which is not so surprising. After all, a broom is rather a blunt instrument.

=========================

* To some people, the terms “veteran” and “incompetent” are synonymous.  I disagree. It takes several years for a teacher to begin to become competent. (I’ve had my differences with a lot of local school administrators, but they also need a lot of experience to begin to become competent.)

* *Yes, Birney again.

========================

My data came from two sources.

• Mary Levy had very carefully compiled a spreadsheet with all of the names of all of the principals in all of the DC public schools going back to at least 2002, and emailed that list to me. I spot-checked it to make sure it was accurate, ad found that it was. Mary’s compilation saved me many hours of labor.
  
• For the scores, I used the data that you can find for yourself for each school on the OSSE-NCLB-DCPS website, which gives, among other things, the percentages of students scoring at various levels on the DC-CAS and its predecessors at all of the various publicly-supported schools in DC. I cut-and-pasted the data on AYP scores for the past 8 years into the previous spreadsheet. Then I had the spreadsheet do a bit of subtraction (scores in 2009 minus the scores in 2008), some sorting (by whether the same principal was kept or not, followed by the change in scores), and finally a bit of bar-graphing. That’s all.

A very apt description of Chancellor Rhee

This description of the head of DCPS was made as a comment to a WaPo article by one crackedbutnotbroken. I don’t know who he or she is, but it’s very, very apt, and I think it needs to be heard. So I am reprinting it here. Here is the commentary:

===================================================

What would you think of a teacher who constantly goes out of her way to belittle the students in her class?

A teacher who relies on her PR department to set up situations where she can go out and publicly shout to the world how “bad” things are.

A teacher who never has anything positive to say or any plans to bring her students up to par.

A teacher who doesn’t believe in individualizations but only generalizations.

A teacher when asked to justify the evaluations of her students can only give vague reasons for grades with no ongoing substantive data.

A teacher who spends quite a bit of time outside of her classroom giving interviews to any and all instead of in her classroom seeking methods to improve performance.

A teacher who sets up situations to pit one student against another.

A teacher who begs the question by throwing red herrings into the mix to muddy the waters so as to make the situation impenetrable.

A teacher who has no allegiance to her students or their parents.

A teacher who has “pets” that bring her apples everyday and tell her how much they love her and will do anything she wants them to do.

A teacher who ignores the students in her class who come from homes with little parental involvement while pandering to those who have active parents.

A teacher who chooses which other people she will work with.

A teacher who only surrounds herself with people who agree with her because she believes she is always right.

A teacher who lacks compassion or even cares about her students. A teacher who is using her students as an experiment.

A teacher who believes that education is not a career but a short term adventure. A teacher who has such an aura that even her supervisor sucks up to her.

A teacher when questioned about suspicious test scores states there is no need for further investigation, just take her word for it, nothing was improper.

A teacher who sees no need to be evaluated by objective measures, only by friends of her choosing.

A teacher who polarizes instead of unifying.

A teacher who has not shown any real positive academic growth for her students in two years(not referring to piggybacking on the improvements that had started before 2007}.

A teacher who has not offered an academic plan of her own for her students.

For me, this would be an ineffective teacher so shouldn’t this person be replaced? If you change the word “teacher” to “chancellor” wouldn’t the same fate be appropriate?

Would you like to let the City Council know what you think?

Would you like to let the DC City Council know what you think about the dishonest, arrogant, and manipulative leadership of Chancellor Rhee?

Good, because you do have an opportunity on Monday, March 15, starting at 10 AM in the Wilson Building.

But you had better get your name on the witness list NOW.

Reason: Chancellor Rhee is busy trying to mobilize the few remaining people in DC who think she’s doing good things, to testify on her behalf. See Bill Turque’s blog today for details on this brazen attempt to falsify public opinion.

So, let’s let the majority be heard! To get on the witness list, call or email Aretha Latta at 202-724-8196, or email her at alatta@dccouncil.us .

THE SIX BOGUS BELIEFS OF MICHELLE RHEE’S DC SCHOOL REFORM

THE SIX BOGUS BELIEFS OF MICHELLE RHEE’S DC SCHOOL REFORM

[This is a guest column by EFavorite, asking us to actually think about Michelle Rhee’s slogans and what they mean. Well worth reading!]

Of all the outrageous information I’ve heard about DC Public Schools under the leadership of Chancellor Michelle Rhee, nothing is quite as bogus as the “Core Beliefs” section on the DCPS Website.  It consists of six beliefs and says, “We expect every adult in the system to act in accordance with these beliefs every day.”  Here they are, with my response to Chancellor Rhee after each belief:

WHAT WE BELIEVE

1. All children, regardless of background or circumstance, can achieve at the highest levels.

Can we just say that all children have potential that can be developed — or is that not dramatic enough?  Instead, our students are not acceptable unless they’re all high-scoring automatons.     Students have different talents and interests and different motivations. Even kids in the same high socio-economic status family can’t all achieve at the “highest” levels.  Anyone who ever had a sibling or more than one child can see this.  It’s hype and hogwash.  It’s an insult to our intelligence, to the concept of human individuality and to long-established knowledge about the devastating effects of poverty.

2. Achievement is a function of effort, not innate ability.

Achievement is a function of effort AND innate ability.  All the effort in the world is not going to make me a top-notch statistician, but if I study hard, I’ll be able to pass Stats 101 (which I did once, barely). And if I’m creative and persuasive enough, I’ll think up good statistical research projects and convince a really talented statistician (like the operator of this website) to carry them out.

3. We have the power and the responsibility to close the achievement gap.

We do?  You mean believing makes it so?  Like the Michelle Rhee Baltimore Miracle of wildly improved but sadly undocumented test scores? How about providing some details on how to close the gap?  If it were simply a matter of drilling for standardized tests, it would have closed by now.  Why doesn’t anyone try to close the White/Asian achievement gap?  It certainly exists.  Perhaps concern about that particular gap is low because both Whites and Asians are doing pretty well.  Also, many Whites don’t know or care about the gap and Asians are not expected to feel guilty about it.  So why not just concentrate on helping people who are not doing so well to do a lot better, and just drop the phony “achievement gap” language.  No need to be enslaved by a contrived term.  We’re not striving to close the singing-in-tune gap or the two-left-feet gap.   Let’s forget about closing the achievement gap.

4. Our schools must be caring and supportive environments.

Finally we agree on something!  Oh, but I bet you mean just for the kids.  Children first, of course, but I fear your constant berating of teachers means you think that the need for care and support at school does not extend to them.  Perhaps you think that schools where teachers are in constant fear can still be caring and supportive environments for the kids, and that teachers who can’t handle a toxic environment of forced discomfort should look for work elsewhere.   But if you get your wish and most teachers leave at the end of the year, who will replace them?

People aren’t lining up any more to take part in the DC school reform miracle that you invented and promulgated with help from the national media.  If you could run a school system the way you can wow a crowd, we might be on the road to recovery.  Unfortunately, your management skills have not improved, your ego is out of control and your press has been terrible lately, what with the mid-year RIF, your rash and unsupported “teachers having sex with children” remark and your refusal to apologize for it, even when asked by your devoted Washington Post supporters, Jay Mathews and Jo-Ann Armao.  Then there’s your attempt to open schools during a blizzard, refusing to acknowledge that irate parents ultimately influenced you to change your mind, and your attempt to revamp highly functional schools like Hardy and Ellington without consulting parents or staff.

5. It is critical to engage our students’ families and communities as valued partners.

Again we agree! But when have you engaged families and communities as valued partners?   Certainly not with Hardy Middle School.  You avoided meeting with parents there and your staff lied about plans to replace their principal.  The Ellington School for the Arts first learned about your plans to relocate their school in a Washington Post article.

6. Our decisions at all levels must be guided by robust data.

Does “robust” mean accurate and complete, or does it mean, “If Michelle Rhee says it’s robust, then it’s robust.”  Telling national media outlets that you’re data-driven, repeatedly and in a very determined tone, makes good copy that will be widely distributed, but it doesn’t make you honest about data.  The indications are that you are driven to distort data. The pretense that you are guided by robust data is shattered simply by reading the well researched and truly data-driven contents of this website.  You can’t take credit for the rising NAEP scores.  You don’t mention that the achievement gap you think is so important has actually widened on your watch and you simply lied outright to the Washington Post and PBS about DC-CAS scores at Shaw Middle School.

In conclusion, Chancellor Rhee, as much as I enjoy proving you wrong, and as easy as you make it, the whole point of my effort is to help others wake-up to the sad fact that DC schools can’t begin to improve until you leave, and take your phony reforms with you.

[Repeat, this was a guest column by EFavorite. I think it’s well worth reading.]

Abuse of teachers – read “Filthy Teaching”

Whoever it is that writes “Filthy Teaching” has done another excellent job today. I strongly recommend reading his column, along with the comments.

The point he’s trying to make is that school administrators make teachers’ jobs literally impossible, and then get the teachers to blame themselves for not being able to live up to impossible standards, in much the same way that battered wives often blame themselves.

I also highly recommend a relatively new blog by the same author as “That’s Right Nate”, which is a satire on conservatism. The new blog is called  Edumacation Archive. It’s excellent. Its focus is on Chicago, because that’s where he lives and works, but he sees right through Michelle Rhee.

Enjoy.

How do we organize in FAVOR of improved public education?

All those in favor of promoting and improving free, public, integrated, comprehensive, universal public education are fighting against a very well-organized, heavily funded, and powerful opposition.

We have all of the right-wing think tanks and major media editorial boards against us. (Don’t believe me? See an article by the late Milton Friedman, in the Washington Post, from 15 years ago. )  NCLB was planned and implemented precisely to destroy the public schools, and is working quite well. We have both the national Republican and Democratic parties vilifying teachers and trying to eliminate free, comprehensive, universal, public education. Public schools appear to be more and more racially segregated, and the charter schools are even worse. We have “philanthopists” representing untold billions in private wealth (essentially stolen from the public) who are trying to privatize public education, and to eliminate some of the few remaining areas of union organization left in the US.

But what are WE going to do about it?

Well, we can do some research to point out the lies and distortions put out by the pro-privatization side. My blogs have mostly been research articles, in which I have been attempting to use facts and statistics to refute the lies peddled by the pro-privatization, anti-public-education, anti-union crowd that is exemplified by Rhee. I have used data from the websites of NAEP, OSSE/DCPS/NCLB,  S.H.A.P.P.E. and the 21st Century School Fund among others. The American Federation of Teachers employs some well-intentioned professional researchers and statisticians who have come up with some very interesting and useful data over the last decade or so.

But don’t expect any union leadership these days to actually be on the side of the rank-and-file. The term “sellout” is still a correct description of the vast majority of union leaders. For example, the current and past leadership of the Washington Teachers Union  have been a pretty sorry lot. Some of them have been too busy lining their own pockets (and hiding this from the teachers) to fight for reform, no matter what they proclaimed publicly.

(Of course, the theft of a few million dollars by Bullock and company didn’t bring down the entire economy, unlike the thefts by CEOs at ENRON, AIG, Bank of America, and so on.  But it did severely weaken the labor movement by showing how corrupt our leadership can be, giving ammunition to the right-wing anti-union crowd.)

George Parker was so far inside Rhee’s corner, for quite a long time, and had drunk so much of her Kool-Aid, that he actually thought that teachers would buy the Red-Green plan, until he found out, probably much to his surprise, that the vast majority of them wanted no part of it. At which point he had to change his tune and his ostensible direction by almost 180 degrees. But don’t depend on him to actually DO anything about it. Notice that Parker has apparently had no executive board meetings or membership meetings for several months – and this at a time when teachers (and the public) should be very actively organizing to oppose the plans of Rhee, of the WaPo editorial board, and all of the billionaires who want to eliminate comprehensive, universal, free, rational public education.

The skills needed to research and analyze that material, to comb the public record for lies by the educational privatization crowd, and to write coherent articles about that, are quite different from the skills needed to actually organize large numbers of people into a cohesive, well-organized, progressive, social movement that achieves positive gains. Having both types of skills is useful, but they are rare in the same person.

(Don’t look at me. I like to think I write OK,  I have experience doing research, and I know a little math, but I know from bitter experience that I suck at organizing, am pessimistic by nature, can’t plan a successful course of public action, am not a good public speaker, and can’t think on my feet.)

Plus, time spent in library stacks or on-line looking up data is time that is NOT spent telephoning or meeting with people to make plans for demonstrations or whatever other type of effective public action is needed. There are only so many hours in a day; and there are very few hours available for any of that stuff if you happen to be employed. And if you are a teacher in the DCPS, why, then, virtually every single one of your waking hours needs to be devoted to the mostly useless rigamarole and BS that is required of you under IMPACT, if you hope to keep your job. (I only have time to do this column because I retired last June!)

We really need to be an active organization in FAVOR of improving public education that has the potential to organize masses of peple. I wish there was one, but I am not aware of any. The Democratic Party, nationally and locally, seems to spout the same line as the privatizers (look at Adrian Fenty and Arne Duncan, for example). Barack Obama has got to be a severe disappointment to anybody who actually believed he was going to make a difference. The various microscopic left-wing splinter groups haven’t amounted to anything for about three decades.

The saying: “The people, united, will never be defeated” is still true. But the “united” part is very hard to attain. If anybody has solid suggestions or plans, or knows of an effective, real-life organization that has potential, I am all ears. We need to find a way out of this crisis.

With a Chancellor like this, DCPS doesn’t need enemies

Isn’t it great to have a superintendent who denigrates DC public schools every chance she gets? Here is an example that she just published:

“….under a new principal at one school, student reading proficiency went from 24 percent to 85 percent in just four years, and from 10 percent to 64 percent in math. In another, only 9 percent of the students were on grade level, when just down the street in a successful charter school, over 90 percent of students were. Same kids, same neighborhoods and exposure to violence, same poverty, hunger, and parent education levels. At the successful schools, the primary difference was the team of adults who decided it was possible for lives and outcomes to move in other directions.”

As usual, Rhee operates on innuendo, never actually giving facts that people can check easily.

After doing a bit of research, I figured out that in the first sentence, she was probably referring to Noyes ES in Northeast Washington, where the percentage of students performing at the “Proficient” or “Advanced” level went as follows. Notice that in 2006, in reading, about 24% of the students scored “proficient”, and in 2009, about 85% scored “proficient”.

If you are wondering what happened to make the scores go down so much in 2006, the answer is simple: DCPS contracted with a different testing company that year to make the NCLB AYP tests for the city. Instead of the SAT-9, students took the DC-CAS. Since the change, our “curriculum” has been more and more just “test prep for the DC-CAS”, so it’s not entirely surprising that teachers have been getting better at coaching students to improve their scores.

Here’s the same data in the form of a graph:

Unlike what Rhee wrote, Noyes has had the same principal, Wayne Ryan, since 2002, well before Rhee came onto the scene, so she can’t take credit for hiring him. And with at least 8 years on the job, Ryan is now one of the most veteran principals in DCPS. I wonder if the reason Rhee left out the namer of the school is because she knows that the principal is NOT new. Also: at some point during this 7-year period, the school was also substantially remodeled and rebuilt. It looks very nice now, unlike 8 years ago, when it was one of the DC public schools that was closed for a week or two by court order because of unsafe roof conditions. I bet that made the staff and students and parents feel better about the school. None of that is stuff that Rhee can take credit for – but she’s trying to!

As far as the other two schools are concerned, Eastern SHS is probably our most problematic high school. Staff, students, and parents at Eastern have been complaining loudly about lack of support and guidance from central DCPS administration. What Janey and Rhee have tried doing, without much success, is replacing teachers and administrators almost every year. Has it worked? Take a look at the statistics:

Not so wonderful, to be sure. It’s also evidence that firing all the teachers and administrators isn’t necessarily going to fix things. Here is the graph:

Recall that Rhee said that Eastern and KIPP Key have essentially the same types of students, and she implied that they are right next door. As usual with statements from Michelle Rhee, this is untrue.

The reputation of Eastern as a “bad” school is now quite well-known. Of the in-boundary students, most of them will do anything they can to attend some other high school, if their grades, conduct, and test scores are good enough for them to do so. From official statistics, only 21% (that is, only about one in five) of the students who live inside the Eastern residential boundary actually attend Eastern SHS. Thirty-seven percent of the students within the Eastern SHS boundary go to charter schools, and 42% of them go to other DC public schools. Eastern now has about 64% in-boundary students, which is relatively high.  Partly as a consequence, only 8.1% of the students at KIPP Key are in special education, but 20.9% of the students at Eastern are.

Compare that with KIPP. Only a very small portion of their students come from the immediate neighborhood. Most of them travel considerable distances to get there. (By the way, KIPP Key Academy and Eastern SHS are nearly 3 miles apart, and are on opposite sides of the Anacostia River.) Plus, when parents apply to get into KIPP, they have to agree to three very important conditions, which I will quote from the on-line application: (If the link doesn’t work for you, just google KIPP KEY DC and look for the application form.)

• “I understand that my child must attend KIPP DC’s extended day
• “I understand that my child must attend KIPP DC’s mandatory summer program
• “I understand that my child (and parent, for Early Childhood) must attend KIPP DC’s Saturday School Program”

Do you think that those conditions might just make a little bit of difference? One of the biggest differences is that the parents MUST buy into this, and so must the student. Otherwise, you can’t attend KIPP. By contrast, at many DC public schools, teachers and administrators have very little parental support of any sort, and can’t even get students to come to school or attend classes. At Eastern (and at many other DC public secondary schools), from what I hear, the majority of the parents never even come to any parent-teacher conferences at all.  Naturally, Michelle Rhee blames the teachers and staff for this; but truth is a lot more complicated than her “just-so” fables.

With those two crucial advantages of extra time and real parental commitment, it’s not all that surprising that KIPP Key Academy has had good test results.  Here are the results I found on the DCPS OSSE NCLB website:

and

Now, here’s the rub. From Rhee’s article, you would think that KIPP Key and Eastern were typical of each group. Literally NOTHING COULD BE FARTHER FROM THE TRUTH. KIPP Key is, by far, the best charter school in DC as far as test scores go. And Eastern is, by far, the worst regular public school in DCPS as far as test scores go – except for schools specifically serving students who have serious learning, medical, or behavior problems. Neither school is typical of the group it belongs to. And, I might add, Rhee has done nothing to make things better at Eastern, either.

Don’t believe me? I will make two bar graphs which show the percentages of students proficient in 2009 on the DC-CAS in reading, for each group. Take a look for yourself. First, the charter schools, since the press says they are so much better than public schools:

Now, the public schools:

At first glance, the two graphs look very similar. But there are some subtle differences, which favor the regular public schools. If you look very carefully and count the bars , you will see that among  the regular public schools, there are 12 out of 120 schools where 80% or more of the students score “proficient” on the DC-CAS; that’s 10.00% of the schools. However, amon the charter schools, there are only 5 out of 71, or 7.04%,  where 80% of the students scored proficient. And at the lower end of the scale, there are 10 public schools out of 120 where less than 20% of the students scored “proficient” in math, or 8.33%. Among the charter schools, there are 11 such schools, out of 71 schools, for a total of 15.49%, which is nearly double the proportion of low-scoring public schools.

When you compare the best of one group with the worst of another group, and pretend that those are representative of each group, that’s called lying with statistics. (Actually, Rhee could write a “how-to” book on that….)

So, how many falsehoods or half-truths or slantings of reality can you find in those three sentences from Michelle Rhee? I’m not sure I can count that high.

24.24

45.63

60

84.71

Why should all students be treated exactly the same?

The Standards movement is getting really crazy. Why, exactly, must all students learn exactly the same things and master the same material on the same tests? Kenneth Bernstein explores this question brilliantly in a piece at Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/6/834419/-students-should-graduate-with-a-rsum,-not-a-transcript

or http://tinyurl.com/stdsRnuts  for short.

I recently wrote the follwing, before reading Bernstein’s piece. But his article is, frankly, much better than mine.

“One of the weird things about the ‘Standards’ movement, and even of NCLB, is the very idea that ALL students need to be held to a single standard of some sort. That’s a crazy idea, frankly.

“Every single person is different, and each one has his or her own ideas about how to pursue happiness and so on.

“Not everybody wants to be a doctor or a computer programmer, or should become one, although it’s good that there are those who want to do this very much. Not everybody wants to be a plumber or a day-care worker, with the same proviso. Not everybody wants to be a sanitation worker or a taxi-driver, but where would we be without them? Even more lost and deeper in doo-doo than we are with this Standards drive.

” All of those professions or jobs are extremely useful fields of work, and we all should be glad that there are people who want to do them. Some of those fields have wage levels that ought to be increased by a lot, and the members thereof should be given training that is a bit more useful and appropriate for what they are doing. And more prestige, to boot.

“But why on earth should people who would like to perform those tasks ALL be required to learn exactly the same things, and master them at exactly the same, in secondary school? What good will it serve to require every single person, in all of those fields, to learn pre-calculus, or creative writing, say? Is it so that the ones who end up taking the less-remunerative and lower-prestige tasks can be made to feel that they are, really and truly, failures who deserve crappy lives?

“Even in France, which has (in my opinion) an overly strict and centralized centrally-administered educational system, admits that there are different strokes for different folks.Some students go to what are essentially vocational schools, where they are supposedly trained for existing jobs. And those who go to the academic schools get to choose which track they are going to specialize in – social sciences, medicine/pharmacy, mathematics, foreign languages, exact sciences, and so on. The specialties may or may not actually correspond to future vocations, but they at least make some effort to try to match what people learn, and what they are tested on, with their future plans.

“As Susan Ohanian put it in her book, One size fits few.”