The Betsy Flap
I posted on Facebook a "Sign this against Betsy" petition opportunity. One of my followers responded with this:
"So says the Dems. You should worry more about the unions and what they did to Detroit. I do believe the Dems were also responsible starting with the Governor (the Dems needed help so they elected a Canadian) and the Mayor. How many more years do you need to fix Michigan education? You had many democratic years and have nothing to show for it. And Obama! Nothing. Maybe your curriculum, methods, programs, management and leadership are substandard. You do know the definition of insanity...."
I responded privately to the comment, with conciliatory language (see an edited snippet at the end). This is a family member, after all, and I wanted some clarity communicated as to why I oppose the nominee.
Since I haven't heard back from the person who commented, I've decided to reprint my response....
My concern bypasses partisanship, and is lodged in stewardship. I can't see where public education can survive under the supervision of a person holding the beliefs, and lacking the knowledge, of a Betsy DeVos.
I've written elsewhere about the founding of public schools in our nation, and their on-going role in supporting social good. I've worked a lifetime in schools, many failing, all struggling. And I did not take my position lightly on this nomination.
Your response blamed the Dems (politics) and unions and a Canadian governor and a mayor all failing to "fix" Michigan education, and in particular, I sense, Detroit schools. I will address these in a moment. What strikes me, though, is your silence on the aims, and qualifications, of DeVos. And her track record.
On my view, her aim is to publicly fund private schools, in order to advance her personal religious agenda of "the Kingdom". She's clueless about huge issues surrounding ESSA, and has no idea what IDEA is. So much for qualifications. And, charters are a billion-dollar failure, in Michigan. Thus, her "fix" has flunked, for 22 years and still counting. I think it's a worthy endeavor to not allow the same to occur at a national level. More on this later.
As to the faulting of the Dems... I looked back over 50 years, a half-century plus. My math may be a little off, but I'm seeing a 2-to-1 ratio here, R over D in Michigan governor incumbency. And if one accepts the premise that schools are failing (I don't) then the data point to, at least, shared blame. That's if governors have any impact on school quality. I submit they don't. But, if they do, and if the schools are failing, to whom shall we ascribe blame?
The same goes for mayors. Detroit had a doozy. Felon. But, no responsibility for, or influence over, schools.
As to the Canadian governor... I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. I'm willing to listen to your position there.
Now, if you want to cite school boards, which do in fact have some influence over schools, well now you're talkin'. Terrible Board leadership in Detroit. But... extrapolate to the entire state? There are 840+ school district "entities" in Michigan (540 traditional, 302 PSA and one Education Achievement Authority or EAA [which has been in existence 4 years, now in year 5, more on this later]). Are you arguing that there are 843 crappy-ass school boards in Michigan, promulgating failure coast to coast? I disagree.
And, relative to unions... I'm not sure what your assertions are here, but the classic ones are that a) they drive up labor costs, b) they make it impossible to fire anybody, and c) they protect bad teachers.
My arguments are, first, please compare teacher salaries and student achievement. Much has been made about merit pay, and there is much to read. My conclusion? It doesn't work. There are reasons for this I can cite. And when I compare teacher pay to other bachelor-degree entry-level positions (in other fields), well, that's one reason we have a teacher shortage. So I reject the notion that we pay too much. (interesting side note, education puts about 85% of their resources into people. The chemical industry? About 5%. Thanks to brother-in-law Steve A. for that info. So, labor costs are a big deal in education.)
As to the tenure problem... for my Labor and Industrial Relations (LIR) cognate some 25 years ago I compared the Consumer's Power labor contract (thanks father-in-law Joe, RIP), a GM labor contract (thanks to a Lansing parent and GM employe) and the Lansing School District teacher contract. All three had somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen to 15 steps required prior to the "letting go" of an employe. All included due process, and an opportunity for the targeted worker to "improve". It's a matter of documentation, and time, wherever you work. Private company, quasi-public utility, public school; it makes virtually no difference. The tenure law exists, but there's a reason for that which I don't need to get into here. The point is, it's not controlling in 99% of teacher firings.
And relative to unions protecting "bad" teachers... true. It's called duty of fair representation, and union officials can be sued (and have lost which is far worse than being sued and winning) for not giving a targeted worker due diligence. So both case law and administrative hearing precedent require unions to go to bat for employes.
But, where most competence-related ejections fail, at least in education, is in timeline adherence. Contracts specify 30 days for this, or 90 days for that, and if the administration side (rarely does the employe side) runs overtime, ding. Case closed.
So blaming unions for poor school quality... some impact, for sure. But staff absence, and turnover, are far more highly correlated with poor student achievement, than anything I've found related to collective bargaining. Solutions to those problems get more to the heart of true school reform and improvement.
I do want to circle back to the EAA, as it ties together charter, pay, union, and quality issues.
The EAA was established by the (Republican) Governor as a sort of super-charter. It was the state's school district, into which the worst of the worst-performing schools would be assigned, thus taken out of the purview of their previous "home" district. Of course the first, and pretty much only, schools assigned to the EAA were former schools within Detroit Public Schools (DPS), and a few charters.
They had a four-year run. You can look up the latest "must close" list generated by the School Reform Office (SRO). After four years of direct state supervision, 8 of the 15 schools in the EAA are slated for closure, or in SRO-talk, "Next Level of Accountability" (see http://www.michigan.gov/sro, click on link to "Next Level of Accountability List").
Thus, the EAA had less than 50% success in "moving the needle" with full control, no union, no feisty locally-elected board, and hand-picked, like-minded, supportive leadership (well-compensated), over four years' time.
This is partly why I say Betsy's experiment failed.
The second reason charters in Michigan continue to fail... lack of oversight. Where charters work (New Orleans, prime example) there is significant oversight, and charters not performing are closed. Betsy and her group argued strenuously, and won, to allow minimal oversight in Michigan. I think there was some talk of competition and letting the market sort everything out. Let parents vote with their feet. In her nomination hearing, she even referenced this position in response to the questions about service to students with disabilities. Let the states decide, she said, and families can move where the rules fit their needs, apparently.
I'm not seeing families living in poverty readily able to move to the second floor, much less across state lines.
But don't get me wrong. Some charters work. So do some traditional public schools. They both serve students not living in poverty quite well. Note: both struggle to serve students living in poverty. So, a fail here for charters (and traditional publics as well). We need to find a way to serve students living in poverty.
Oh wait; we know how. It's just that we typically lack the will. Here's what we need to do, to be successful: the solution is a systems approach, not school-by-school. Details are available at tinyurl.com/miexcel-resourcecenter.
The third indicant of charters failing students and parents in Michigan? It's the diversion of a billion dollars away from traditional public schools. Take Lansing as an example. If, say, 10 charters crop up locally and each enrolls 200 students, that's 2000 not enrolled in Lansing Public Schools. It's not money wasted, because the citizens are still funding education for those 2000 kids.
However, since the 2000 students come from a variety of grade levels, and not from just one school site, Lansing still has to maintain facilities and services for the remaining 10,000 students. Surely there is some staff attrition due to reduced enrollment, but now schools have to craft "splits" at the elementary level, and start paring down the variety of offerings at the secondary level. Who is positively served by that? And, 2000 kids times $9k each in state aid is $18 million, just to put it in financial perspective.
Michigan has lost a half-million students over the past 40 years, down now to 1.5 million enrolled currently. That's a 25% hit. Add in students enrolling in charters, and some traditional public districts are looking at totals of 50% and more in state aid reduction, due to out-migration, reduced birth rate, and/or charters.
And a fourth reason charters are failing us: special populations. As a principal, I had parents come to me to enroll their special education student, telling me that the charter had told them "well, (s)he'd be better served in Lansing, they have a lot of services we don't" (yes, more than once) which is a nod to economies of scale.
Which is to say, where you have a larger population of special needs students you can hire teachers who are trained and certified to teach special needs students. Where your population is smaller, it becomes very expensive to hire a teacher to serve one, two, or a handful of special needs students.
Thus, charters (illegally, I must add) "counseled" parents of special needs students to enroll in the traditional public school setting, thus cleverly minimizing their costs to serve all students, and concomitantly burdening the traditional public schools with disproportionate numbers of special needs students to serve.
Last, but not least in the fail department; sports and extracurriculars. Did you know there are laws (in more than one state) requiring public schools to allow charter students access to these? Football, swimming, Spanish club... Charters typically don't have sufficient enrollment to support such things. Actually, there's a movement for 8-man football (I think 8, or is it 7?) across our smaller districts as they have trouble fielding a full team to go eleven on eleven. Anyway, this means that locker rooms, fields, pools, transportation and coach/advisor expenses must be borne by... yes. The traditional public schools. One could argue that well, the traditional publics already have those things in place, so it doesn't cost more. True. But the charters spend zero on such program additions, and contribute nothing to the operating costs. You have heard of pay-to-play, yes? There's nothing "free" about such opportunities. And I'm not even addressing the social glue that teams and activities provide for teens.... which charters deny, and lawmakers acknowledge, and force traditional public schools to foot the bill, entirely.
One of the reasons for compulsory attendance laws (and FAPE) across our nation is a common belief in the value of schooling for all. The great American promise of opportunity is grounded in an "equal" chance to be educated to a level which allows one to pursue participation in the larger world, including the world of work. But schooling also provides a common experience culturally, with such requirements as the pledge, and government courses, and (recently) school lunches. So schools provide a homogeneous experience for a heterogeneous population - the "melting pot" concept.
This is the "public" in public schools. What Betsy craves is a school where her Kingdom lessons can be taught. A school where her world-view can prevail. A school where admission is controlled, limited to Kingdom families.
And, she wants you to pay for it.
Most Catholic schools near me charge $10000 per year for tuition, I think. Most families can't afford that, so deep discounts (scholarships) are provided. I haven't researched it, but I suspect most Catholic schools end up putting about $5000 behind each student. I'm just guessing, based on salary numbers I've been given informally by teachers in parochial schools.
Imagine their joy at having the $7000 to $15000 per pupil currently provided to public school systems across Michigan. With nary a parent dollar flowing in.
This is the real problem behind the real aim of the DeVos enterprise in schools.
Flipping this one convention, to have private schools suddenly receive public funds, immediately costs Michigan taxpayers 10% more for education (non-public school enrollment runs about 10% of all school-age children in Michigan). That's $1.6 billion more than the current expenditure of $16 billion.
Without looking at other states, might we be looking at $50 billion nationally?
Who will foot this bill?
And more to the point, who will benefit? The for-profit failing charter school companies in Michigan, as is Betsy's proven legacy? I should underscore, her charter schools are failing to educate students. The charter companies are not losing money.
To have this nomination move forward, as it now is, puts a failed agenda in a seat of power. I've long seen the difficulty one person has in creating deep and lasting change in an organization. My lens is on organizations much smaller than the DOE. But I also have seen the devastating impact policy has on practice, especially given the Michigan charter school story.
And so I oppose Betsy as a horrible choice to be the face of education in America. I do not care what her personal beliefs are about God or morality or abortion or global warming or anything else. That's all her business. But giving her the reins to impose her specious and corrosive personal perspective as the "salvation" for public education will produce exactly the opposite.
This is the end of liberty, to an extent, but certainly of justice, for all.
And, again, it's important to say, it is in the interests of family harmony that I share these points with you. Politics and religion should not rule us. I'm not just ranting to vent, but rather to say, I really think Betsy is a bad idea, and here's why. I don't expect you to come to my way of thinking, but I hope you can understand where I'm coming from.
"So says the Dems. You should worry more about the unions and what they did to Detroit. I do believe the Dems were also responsible starting with the Governor (the Dems needed help so they elected a Canadian) and the Mayor. How many more years do you need to fix Michigan education? You had many democratic years and have nothing to show for it. And Obama! Nothing. Maybe your curriculum, methods, programs, management and leadership are substandard. You do know the definition of insanity...."
I responded privately to the comment, with conciliatory language (see an edited snippet at the end). This is a family member, after all, and I wanted some clarity communicated as to why I oppose the nominee.
Since I haven't heard back from the person who commented, I've decided to reprint my response....
My concern bypasses partisanship, and is lodged in stewardship. I can't see where public education can survive under the supervision of a person holding the beliefs, and lacking the knowledge, of a Betsy DeVos.
I've written elsewhere about the founding of public schools in our nation, and their on-going role in supporting social good. I've worked a lifetime in schools, many failing, all struggling. And I did not take my position lightly on this nomination.
Your response blamed the Dems (politics) and unions and a Canadian governor and a mayor all failing to "fix" Michigan education, and in particular, I sense, Detroit schools. I will address these in a moment. What strikes me, though, is your silence on the aims, and qualifications, of DeVos. And her track record.
On my view, her aim is to publicly fund private schools, in order to advance her personal religious agenda of "the Kingdom". She's clueless about huge issues surrounding ESSA, and has no idea what IDEA is. So much for qualifications. And, charters are a billion-dollar failure, in Michigan. Thus, her "fix" has flunked, for 22 years and still counting. I think it's a worthy endeavor to not allow the same to occur at a national level. More on this later.
As to the faulting of the Dems... I looked back over 50 years, a half-century plus. My math may be a little off, but I'm seeing a 2-to-1 ratio here, R over D in Michigan governor incumbency. And if one accepts the premise that schools are failing (I don't) then the data point to, at least, shared blame. That's if governors have any impact on school quality. I submit they don't. But, if they do, and if the schools are failing, to whom shall we ascribe blame?
The same goes for mayors. Detroit had a doozy. Felon. But, no responsibility for, or influence over, schools.
As to the Canadian governor... I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. I'm willing to listen to your position there.
Now, if you want to cite school boards, which do in fact have some influence over schools, well now you're talkin'. Terrible Board leadership in Detroit. But... extrapolate to the entire state? There are 840+ school district "entities" in Michigan (540 traditional, 302 PSA and one Education Achievement Authority or EAA [which has been in existence 4 years, now in year 5, more on this later]). Are you arguing that there are 843 crappy-ass school boards in Michigan, promulgating failure coast to coast? I disagree.
And, relative to unions... I'm not sure what your assertions are here, but the classic ones are that a) they drive up labor costs, b) they make it impossible to fire anybody, and c) they protect bad teachers.
My arguments are, first, please compare teacher salaries and student achievement. Much has been made about merit pay, and there is much to read. My conclusion? It doesn't work. There are reasons for this I can cite. And when I compare teacher pay to other bachelor-degree entry-level positions (in other fields), well, that's one reason we have a teacher shortage. So I reject the notion that we pay too much. (interesting side note, education puts about 85% of their resources into people. The chemical industry? About 5%. Thanks to brother-in-law Steve A. for that info. So, labor costs are a big deal in education.)
As to the tenure problem... for my Labor and Industrial Relations (LIR) cognate some 25 years ago I compared the Consumer's Power labor contract (thanks father-in-law Joe, RIP), a GM labor contract (thanks to a Lansing parent and GM employe) and the Lansing School District teacher contract. All three had somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen to 15 steps required prior to the "letting go" of an employe. All included due process, and an opportunity for the targeted worker to "improve". It's a matter of documentation, and time, wherever you work. Private company, quasi-public utility, public school; it makes virtually no difference. The tenure law exists, but there's a reason for that which I don't need to get into here. The point is, it's not controlling in 99% of teacher firings.
And relative to unions protecting "bad" teachers... true. It's called duty of fair representation, and union officials can be sued (and have lost which is far worse than being sued and winning) for not giving a targeted worker due diligence. So both case law and administrative hearing precedent require unions to go to bat for employes.
But, where most competence-related ejections fail, at least in education, is in timeline adherence. Contracts specify 30 days for this, or 90 days for that, and if the administration side (rarely does the employe side) runs overtime, ding. Case closed.
So blaming unions for poor school quality... some impact, for sure. But staff absence, and turnover, are far more highly correlated with poor student achievement, than anything I've found related to collective bargaining. Solutions to those problems get more to the heart of true school reform and improvement.
I do want to circle back to the EAA, as it ties together charter, pay, union, and quality issues.
The EAA was established by the (Republican) Governor as a sort of super-charter. It was the state's school district, into which the worst of the worst-performing schools would be assigned, thus taken out of the purview of their previous "home" district. Of course the first, and pretty much only, schools assigned to the EAA were former schools within Detroit Public Schools (DPS), and a few charters.
They had a four-year run. You can look up the latest "must close" list generated by the School Reform Office (SRO). After four years of direct state supervision, 8 of the 15 schools in the EAA are slated for closure, or in SRO-talk, "Next Level of Accountability" (see http://www.michigan.gov/sro, click on link to "Next Level of Accountability List").
Thus, the EAA had less than 50% success in "moving the needle" with full control, no union, no feisty locally-elected board, and hand-picked, like-minded, supportive leadership (well-compensated), over four years' time.
This is partly why I say Betsy's experiment failed.
The second reason charters in Michigan continue to fail... lack of oversight. Where charters work (New Orleans, prime example) there is significant oversight, and charters not performing are closed. Betsy and her group argued strenuously, and won, to allow minimal oversight in Michigan. I think there was some talk of competition and letting the market sort everything out. Let parents vote with their feet. In her nomination hearing, she even referenced this position in response to the questions about service to students with disabilities. Let the states decide, she said, and families can move where the rules fit their needs, apparently.
I'm not seeing families living in poverty readily able to move to the second floor, much less across state lines.
But don't get me wrong. Some charters work. So do some traditional public schools. They both serve students not living in poverty quite well. Note: both struggle to serve students living in poverty. So, a fail here for charters (and traditional publics as well). We need to find a way to serve students living in poverty.
Oh wait; we know how. It's just that we typically lack the will. Here's what we need to do, to be successful: the solution is a systems approach, not school-by-school. Details are available at tinyurl.com/miexcel-resourcecenter.
The third indicant of charters failing students and parents in Michigan? It's the diversion of a billion dollars away from traditional public schools. Take Lansing as an example. If, say, 10 charters crop up locally and each enrolls 200 students, that's 2000 not enrolled in Lansing Public Schools. It's not money wasted, because the citizens are still funding education for those 2000 kids.
However, since the 2000 students come from a variety of grade levels, and not from just one school site, Lansing still has to maintain facilities and services for the remaining 10,000 students. Surely there is some staff attrition due to reduced enrollment, but now schools have to craft "splits" at the elementary level, and start paring down the variety of offerings at the secondary level. Who is positively served by that? And, 2000 kids times $9k each in state aid is $18 million, just to put it in financial perspective.
Michigan has lost a half-million students over the past 40 years, down now to 1.5 million enrolled currently. That's a 25% hit. Add in students enrolling in charters, and some traditional public districts are looking at totals of 50% and more in state aid reduction, due to out-migration, reduced birth rate, and/or charters.
And a fourth reason charters are failing us: special populations. As a principal, I had parents come to me to enroll their special education student, telling me that the charter had told them "well, (s)he'd be better served in Lansing, they have a lot of services we don't" (yes, more than once) which is a nod to economies of scale.
Which is to say, where you have a larger population of special needs students you can hire teachers who are trained and certified to teach special needs students. Where your population is smaller, it becomes very expensive to hire a teacher to serve one, two, or a handful of special needs students.
Thus, charters (illegally, I must add) "counseled" parents of special needs students to enroll in the traditional public school setting, thus cleverly minimizing their costs to serve all students, and concomitantly burdening the traditional public schools with disproportionate numbers of special needs students to serve.
Last, but not least in the fail department; sports and extracurriculars. Did you know there are laws (in more than one state) requiring public schools to allow charter students access to these? Football, swimming, Spanish club... Charters typically don't have sufficient enrollment to support such things. Actually, there's a movement for 8-man football (I think 8, or is it 7?) across our smaller districts as they have trouble fielding a full team to go eleven on eleven. Anyway, this means that locker rooms, fields, pools, transportation and coach/advisor expenses must be borne by... yes. The traditional public schools. One could argue that well, the traditional publics already have those things in place, so it doesn't cost more. True. But the charters spend zero on such program additions, and contribute nothing to the operating costs. You have heard of pay-to-play, yes? There's nothing "free" about such opportunities. And I'm not even addressing the social glue that teams and activities provide for teens.... which charters deny, and lawmakers acknowledge, and force traditional public schools to foot the bill, entirely.
One of the reasons for compulsory attendance laws (and FAPE) across our nation is a common belief in the value of schooling for all. The great American promise of opportunity is grounded in an "equal" chance to be educated to a level which allows one to pursue participation in the larger world, including the world of work. But schooling also provides a common experience culturally, with such requirements as the pledge, and government courses, and (recently) school lunches. So schools provide a homogeneous experience for a heterogeneous population - the "melting pot" concept.
This is the "public" in public schools. What Betsy craves is a school where her Kingdom lessons can be taught. A school where her world-view can prevail. A school where admission is controlled, limited to Kingdom families.
And, she wants you to pay for it.
Most Catholic schools near me charge $10000 per year for tuition, I think. Most families can't afford that, so deep discounts (scholarships) are provided. I haven't researched it, but I suspect most Catholic schools end up putting about $5000 behind each student. I'm just guessing, based on salary numbers I've been given informally by teachers in parochial schools.
Imagine their joy at having the $7000 to $15000 per pupil currently provided to public school systems across Michigan. With nary a parent dollar flowing in.
This is the real problem behind the real aim of the DeVos enterprise in schools.
Flipping this one convention, to have private schools suddenly receive public funds, immediately costs Michigan taxpayers 10% more for education (non-public school enrollment runs about 10% of all school-age children in Michigan). That's $1.6 billion more than the current expenditure of $16 billion.
Without looking at other states, might we be looking at $50 billion nationally?
Who will foot this bill?
And more to the point, who will benefit? The for-profit failing charter school companies in Michigan, as is Betsy's proven legacy? I should underscore, her charter schools are failing to educate students. The charter companies are not losing money.
To have this nomination move forward, as it now is, puts a failed agenda in a seat of power. I've long seen the difficulty one person has in creating deep and lasting change in an organization. My lens is on organizations much smaller than the DOE. But I also have seen the devastating impact policy has on practice, especially given the Michigan charter school story.
And so I oppose Betsy as a horrible choice to be the face of education in America. I do not care what her personal beliefs are about God or morality or abortion or global warming or anything else. That's all her business. But giving her the reins to impose her specious and corrosive personal perspective as the "salvation" for public education will produce exactly the opposite.
This is the end of liberty, to an extent, but certainly of justice, for all.
And, again, it's important to say, it is in the interests of family harmony that I share these points with you. Politics and religion should not rule us. I'm not just ranting to vent, but rather to say, I really think Betsy is a bad idea, and here's why. I don't expect you to come to my way of thinking, but I hope you can understand where I'm coming from.
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