From Betsy Combier:
Throughout America the education-industrial-complex is trying to privatize public school education. The first step in this strategy is to make tests easier, so that everyone does better. Then, any scores that dont look too good even under the new dumbed-down standard are covered up by the media and by edubabble - press releases that could make Jack the Ripper look like Thomas Jefferson(my personal favorite US President). Organizations like Edison Schools are on the run out of America, and now they are setting up shop in Asia. See more below.

Real Tests for Real Children
February 25, 2007
Editorial
LINK

The No Child Left Behind Act required the states to raise educational standards and test student performance, in exchange for federal aid. But things have not worked as Congress planned. Instead of moving toward the educational excellence that the country needs to compete in the global economy, many states opted for dumbed-down tests and deliberate sleight of hand to create the fraudulent appearance of progress.

As a result, states that perform well with their own watered-down exams do shockingly poorly when their students take the far more rigorous federal test known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. A report this month by the bipartisan Commission on No Child Left Behind highlights this problem and calls for the development of more rigorous tests and national standards in reading, language arts, math and science.

States would then be offered the options of embracing the national standards and tests, building new ones based on the national model or keeping their existing standards and tests. States that chose not to embrace the national standards would have to submit their tests and standards to federal evaluation — to see how they compare to the national model — and the results would be reported to parents and the general public.

This proposal, which would have been shot down in previous years, is finding a great deal of sympathy in Congress. That is good news, given the work that has to be done to ensure that all of America’s children can compete in the world.

NY TIMES Editorial
July 2, 2006
The School Testing Dodge

Many of the nations that have left the United States behind in math and science have ministries of education with clear mandates when it comes to educational quality control. The American system, by contrast, celebrates local autonomy for its schools. When Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, it tried to address the quality control problem through annual tests, which the states were supposed to administer in exchange for federal dollars. But things have not quite worked out as planned.

A startling new study shows that many states have a longstanding tradition of setting basement-level educational standards and misleading the public about student performance. The patterns were set long before No Child Left Behind, and it will require more than just passing a law to change them.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a research institute run jointly by Stanford and the University of California, showed that in many states students who performed brilliantly on state tests scored dismally on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is currently the strongest, most well-respected test in the country.

The study analyzed state-level testing practices from 1992 to 2005. It found that many states were dumbing down their tests or shifting the proficiency targets in math and reading, creating a fraudulent appearance of progress and making it impossible to tell how well students were actually performing.

Not all states have tried to evade the truth. The tests in Massachusetts, for example, yield performance results that are reasonably close to the federal standard. Not so for states like Oklahoma, where the score gap between state and federal tests has averaged 48 points in reading and 60 points in math, according to the PACE report. The states that want to mislead the government — and their own residents — use a variety of dodges, including setting passing scores low, using weak tests and switching tests from year to year to prevent unflattering comparisons over time. These strategies become transparent when the same students who perform so well on state tests do poorly on the more rigorous federal exam. Most alarming of all, the PACE study finds that the gap between student reading performance on the state and federal tests has actually grown wider over time — which suggests that claims of reading progress in many states are in fact phony.

States have always resisted the idea of one national set of tests, citing local autonomy. But if the United States wants to equal its competitors abroad, it must move away from a patchwork system based on weak standards and a frankly fraudulent system of student assessment. Under one promising proposal, the government would finance creation of a rigorous, high-quality test that would be provided free to the states — as long as they agreed to use federal scoring standards. That would finally give the country an accurate and all-encompassing view of student performance.

STUDY FINDS ACADEMIC GAINS NOT SUPERIOR AMONG PHILADELPHIA STUDENTS ENROLLED IN PRIVATELY RUN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Academic improvement among students attending Philadelphia public schools managed by private operators kept pace, but did not exceed, the achievement gains of students in the rest of the district in the past four years, according to an analysis issued today by the RAND Corporation and Research for Action.

While significant academic gains were made from 2002 to 2006 by students across Philadelphia, private managers who were given extra funds to run 45 elementary and middle schools did not achieve additional gains exceeding district-wide trends, according to researchers.

Researchers say that their findings have implications for other regions that are considering private management of public schools and that the effort in Philadelphia suggests the challenges of implementing private management on a large scale.

Philadelphia is the site of the largest experiment in the private management of public schools in the United States.

“The privately managed schools, on average, showed gains that were comparable to those in the rest of the district.” said Brian Gill, lead author of the report and a researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

“Schools in Philadelphia have shown strong improvement that has been reflected widely across the district,” said Jolley Christman, co-founder of Research for Action and an author of the report. “But our findings show the investment in private management of schools has not paid the expected dividends.”

Meanwhile, another group of schools that were “restructured” — remaining under district management with intensive intervention and a comparable increase in resources — showed significant gains in math in the first three years studied and in reading during the first year. In the fourth year, the additional resources for the restructured schools ended, but the schools appeared to maintain their gains in math.(Emphasis added by Editor)

Philadelphia's experiment with the private management of public schools began in 2002 when, after years of low achievement and budget crises in the School District of Philadelphia, the state of Pennsylvania launched a takeover of the 200,000-pupil district.

District management was turned over to an appointed commission, which hired a new chief executive who imposed new district-wide curricula and a system of frequent benchmark assessments.

The school district's new leaders also adopted what is known as the “diverse provider” model, turning over the management of some of the district's lowest-achieving schools to seven different private managers, who received additional per-pupil funding. Those private managers include for-profit firms such as Edison Schools (the nation's largest for-profit operator of public schools), local nonprofits and two local universities.

Since the state takeover of Philadelphia schools, the proportion of elementary and middle-school students achieving proficiency in reading and math has increased substantially.

From the 2001-2002 school year to the 2005-2006 school year, an additional 11 percent of fifth grade students reached proficiency in reading and 23 percent reached proficiency in math, according to state tests. Similarly, an additional 20 percent of eighth grade students reached proficiency in reading and 19 percent reached proficiency in math.

The four-year gains for Philadelphia's low-achieving schools (which included a majority of schools in the district) were generally on par with gains from similar low-achieving schools in the rest of the state. Philadelphia's schools out-gained comparison schools in middle-school reading.

The analysis by RAND Education and Research for Action examined the performance not only of the privately managed schools and the restructured schools, but also a group of schools dubbed the “Sweet 16.” These previously low-performing schools showed improvement prior to the state takeover. The schools were given extra per-pupil funding, but no other district intervention.

Results for the Sweet 16 were similar to those of the privately managed schools. Researchers found no significant positive or negative effects in either reading or math among the Sweet 16 schools in any of the four years studied.

Advocates of private management of public schools say the approach works best when private managers have full control of campuses and parents decide where to enroll their children — measures that were not fully implemented in Philadelphia.

Funding for the study was provided by the Annenberg Foundation, the William Penn Foundation and the Accountability Review Council for the School District of Philadelphia. The presentation of findings was hosted by the Philadelphia Education Fund.

The report, titled “State Takeover, School Restructuring, Private Management, and Student Achievement in Philadelphia,” is available at www.rand.org. Other authors of the report are Ron Zimmer of RAND and Suzanne Blanc of Research for Action.

RAND Education conducts research and analysis on a variety of topics, including school reform, educational assessment and accountability, and trends among teachers and teacher training.

Research for Action is a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization working in educational research and reform to insure equitable opportunities and outcomes for all students. For more information, go to www.researchforaction.org.

Straight talk about a report on achievement at city schools

Our own conclusion is that competition from private managers is unlikely to be a major factor in student achievement gains, because private management was not implemented in a way designed to promote competitive effects. In particular, private management did not include a regime of open parental choice of schools. Additionally, schools elsewhere in Pennsylvania improved at similar rates despite the absence of private managers. But reasonable observers may disagree.
(Emphasis added by Editor)

We hope our study will contribute to a healthy discussion not only about whether and how the private provider relationships should be continued, but also about how the district and the city can build on past successes, continuing the hard work of raising the achievement of all students in Philadelphia.

Contact Brian Gill at Brian_Gill@rand.org. Contact Jolley Bruce Christman at jchristman@researchforaction.org.

Posted on Thu, Feb. 01, 2007
Report: Managers fall short in Phila. schools
Their costlier 5-year gains lag the district’s, it said.
By Susan Snyder
Inquirer Staff Writer

LINK

The Philadelphia School District's privately run schools - the largest experiment of its kind in the country - have failed to deliver higher test scores than the district despite costing an extra $90 million, a study released today says.

The analysis compared how district students performed on state and national tests during the last five years with students at the 41 schools run by the six private managers, including for-profit Edison Schools Inc.

"There's no evidence to proceed with the model of private management of schools, as is, that we have here in Philadelphia," said Jolley Bruce Christman of the Philadelphia-based Research for Action, one of two groups that wrote the study, the first substantial look at the district's private-management model since it began in 2002.

"There may be real advantages or benefits that parents can see that are not related to the standardized test scores that we looked at," Christman added. "But in terms of a blanket continuation of this model, I don't see evidence that that should happen."

Instead, 21 "restructured" schools that got additional math and reading time, teacher coaches, and other special attention while remaining under district management emerged as the best performers, the study found.

The report, also written by the Rand Corp. and funded in part by the Annenberg and William Penn Foundations, has touched off yet another debate - locally and nationally - over the effectiveness of privatization in public schools.

Proponents argued that the district's overall progress resulted from the competition generated by hiring private managers - although the study's authors said they had found no proof that competition mattered.

"It was the introduction of change that caused all schools to rise," asserted Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, a proponent of charter schools and school choice.

Critics, however, cited the findings as further evidence that an $18 million annual cost has not produced the revolutionary results that some of the companies had said were possible.

"To me, it's a romance that just hasn't worked. It's not that they're doing worse, but they don't seem to be doing better, and they cost more. That's a serious challenge, particularly for a district that is facing a deficit," said Henry M. Levin, director of Columbia University's National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education.

Helen Gym, who has complained about increasing class sizes and cutbacks at her daughter's school, Powel in West Philadelphia, urged the districts School Reform Commission to heed the results.

"Anyone who is standing up and defending these private contracts can't be doing it for educational reasons," she said. "It's been five years, and they're not really defensible anymore. My daughter and her school are suffering for it."

But others, including district leaders, said the private managers couldn't be expected to do better than the district when they had been given some of the worst-performing schools.

"I don't think that's fair, because these were the worst schools. There was a determination by the commonwealth that in the worst-achieving schools they wanted to see new ways of approaching things, and that's exactly what happened," said James Nevels, chairman of the School Reform Commission, the district's governing body, which commissioned the study.

The findings come as the commission is poised to decide whether to continue, modify or scrap the model, considered by many the core of its reform plan. The five-year contracts expire this summer. The private operators get $450 and $750 more per student than the district funds its schools.

A decision could come as early as March as the district, which has struggled with a deficit in recent months and still faces a $20 million gap, prepares its next budget. Two other studies, which are looking at measures besides standardized-test scores, are expected out in the next month.

"That study does not dictate what we're going to do," Nevels said. "Its results are information to use in our decision."

Nevels said the district also would consider other measures as it takes a comprehensive look at the schools run by the providers - Edison, for-profit Victory Schools, Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, Universal Cos. and Foundations, Inc. It also will consider giving some successful managers more autonomy, including more say in selecting staff and educational programming.

Paul Vallas, the district's chief executive officer, cited Edison-run Shaw Middle School in West Philadelphia as a strong performer.

"You can't look at this monolithically," he said. "There are some that are clearly struggling, and there are some that are doing better."

Many of the schools had improved test scores over the five years, but did not outpace the district's overall gains. The report singled out two managers for poorer performance: Temple in math and reading and Victory in math.

Educators, parents and officials from both bristled at the finding.

"I don't believe the report," said parent Jeffery Smith, president of the Home and School Association at Duckrey School, which is near Temple's North Philadelphia campus. "It seems like every time a school gets something that's helping our students excel, they want to take it away."

Duckrey principal David Baugh said Temple had provided literacy coaches, writing centers and teacher training, among other benefits. He also cited test-score growth at the four schools managed by Temple. The percentage of students proficient in math has risen from 5.1 percent in 2002 to 35.3 percent in 2006. Reading scores increased from 9.8 percent to 24.2 percent, he said.

Benjamin Wright, who heads Victory's Philadelphia operation, said the company had begun using a new math program and had to train teachers.

"It will take us another three years to completely transform these schools and hand them back to the district. If we're not renewed..., the reforms we put in place here will be for naught. It's that simple," he said.

As the commission decides, it will have to weigh input from the legislature, which has earmarked $25 million each year to be spent on the six managers and other outside-management efforts. If the district cuts the managers, it could lose the funding.

"The conversation needs to occur on how to best use those resources," Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Gerald Zahorchak said. "I won't make a blanket judgment. The report indicates that introducing competition might not be worth the additional expenditure per student, but this is only one form of analysis. We look forward to working with the reform commission in Philadelphia to more fully evaluate the effects of private management."

John Chubb, Edison's chief education officer, criticized the study, saying it failed to recognize the positive effects of competition, among other shortcomings. He said last night that Edison, which runs 20 of the schools, would challenge Rand and Research for Action to a public debate on the report.

"The district is much better than it used to be," he said. "All schools are better off. This should be viewed as a win-win."

But Brian Gill, a senior researcher with Rand, said there was no reason to believe the managers would exceed the district's growth in the future. He said there was no evidence to "make us think there are going to be positive results in the future."

Contact staff writer Susan Snyder at 215-854-4693 or ssnyder@phillynews.com.

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