by David Safier
The Goldwater Institute has a new kid in town, Jonathan Butcher, who replaced Matthew Ladner as their educational go-to guy. Butcher isn't as polished, snarky and clever as Ladner. But give him time. He may learn to transcend mere half-truths and move onto genuine whoppers when he gets in the swing of things.
[Jonathan, did you know bus drivers are bureacrats? Oh yeah. Ladner said so, and the Goldwater Institute sent me a letter saying it agrees. (I'll be happy to furnish all the "Bus drivers are bureaucrats" details, and you can decide whether or not I'm telling the truth. My email is safier@schooltales.net) You have a long way to go, my friend.]
Blended learning must be the latest big thing in conservative education, judging from the time they've spent pushing it. And Yuma's Carpe Diem charter is Arizona's poster child for blended learning. For all I know, it may be a pretty good school. I think it's serious in its educational mission.
For Ladner, Butcher and G.I., Carpe Diem is more than a school. It's proof you can cut your teaching staff in half, split student learning time between computer and classroom, and make huge educational strides with less funds. Butcher, like other C.D. boosters, cites its gains in achievement scores as proof.
But if he's honest, he can't talk about the jump in scores without mentioning Erasuregate.
According to an AZ Republic story in March of this year:
In spring 2010, the company that administers the AIMS test, Pearson Education, flagged Carpe Diem's sophomore AIMS reading test for having a higher-than-average number of erasure marks. Flagging means the state gets an alert. Pearson's report said a group of 27 Carpe Diem students who took the AIMS reading test had a total number of wrong-to-right erasure marks seven times as high as the state average. [boldface added]
The school's founder isn't concerned by the possible cheating. G.I. isn't concerned either. Neither is Huppenthal, who loves C.D. The Ed Supe could easily have ordered that this year's AIMS test be monitored at the school — then, if the results remained as high, he could have crowed that the gains were confirmed — but he chose to do nothing.
Jonathan, my question to you is, are you satisfied being a hack who begins with predetermined answers and tailors the facts to suit your needs, or are you a serious individual with moral and academic standards that compel you to use honest appraisals in your writing? If you're a serious individual, you have to deal with all the evidence and all the possibilities, including the possibility in this case that C.D.'s test scores were cooked.
My hat's off to you if you're a serious guy, but I'm warning you, you probably won't last long at G.I.
Discover more from Blog for Arizona
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Again, points well taken, Phillip. The reason I asked you about that one point is, unlike so many on the other side of the spectrum (and, unfortunately, some on the left as well), BfA likes to make its points fairly, based on correct information. I wasn’t sure if you were right or wrong, but I’ve never seen you purposely cook the books, so I wanted a fact check. If you were right, I would use that damning fact in my own posts. But even at 50 to 1, that’s twice the ratio in Arizona district schools (which is one of the highest in the nation — and readers shouldn’t confuse teacher-student ratio with class size, since those are very different figures). The only schools with that kind of ratio are online schools, like Arizona Virtual Academy. Even if the students only spend part of their time in classrooms, the ratio should be far lower than that.
Like you, I’m very skeptical of the test scores, but no one in a position of power wants to look any further.
Yes, David, I just reread the article from The Republic, and you are correct about 240 students being “tracked” by one teacher. But I don’t think that depreciates my point much because in TUSD, by contract, teachers are limited to 156 students a day, which also means teachers “track” the progress of 156 students a year to measure and monitor their progress in meeting or mastering all the performance objectives of one subject detailed in the state academic standards, the ones tested by AIMS.
SO, as a parent, when you contrast 240 being “tracked” with 156 being “tracked,” which one sounds better? If you are trying to asses which teacher will be able to give your child more attention, or more effective attention relative to the state standards, which one will be able to do a better job?
Also, I was shocked anew when I reread the article in The Republic from last March. There are more obvious examples of gains that cannot be explained away as the results of a “new model” or a new philosophy: “In one example, a class rose from the 36th percentile in math in sixth grade to the 97th in seventh grade…”
Would anybody here bet money on the claim that all the erasure marks were just coincidence? Preposterous.
I also just thought about this school’s “new model” that directs each student have the same teacher every year in grades 6-12. Can you imagine a student being better off having the same teacher every year for 7 years in a row? NO, the contrast between having the same English teacher every year in every grade- 6, 7, 8 9, 10, 11, 12 – and having new teachers each year is the contrast between narrow and broad, between small and large, between shallow and deep. I think the following analogy has merit: Are you better off reading the same novel every year or are you better off reading a new novel each and every year?
I’ll say it again: it’s outrageously preposterous to assert that the gains in AIMS test scores reported by this school last year were legitimate, and second, what parent thinks their child will become better educated — will broaden their perspective, deepen their understanding, and sharpen their mastery of skills — by being exposed to one and only one teacher for 7 years in a row?
It is also shocking that this is what the Goldwater Institute is promoting as “homegrown innovation.” That’s like going to a restaurant and getting served yesterday’s leftover fried red beans, the same red beans the cook has been making once a week for the last 7 years. No thanks, GoldWater Institute. If that is what the GI calls innovation, it is sorely missing the mark — go back into the kitchen and develop some new recipes because this one is no good.
(btw, to the supporters of the GoldWater Institute, please check out the innovations practiced in schools in Finland http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/82329/education-reform-Finland-US…they don’t rely on erasure marks and cooked numbers for their success. They do it with creativity, brains, insight, and money. Those are the great ingredients used in a tremendous recipe of success.
Terrific elaboration, Phillip, thanks. I want to correct one thing I believe you got wrong. As I understand it, Carpe Diem has a student-teacher ratio of about 50 to 1, about twice that of most brick-and-mortar schools. Your 240 number may refer to the number of students a given teacher tracks, since students continue working with one teacher for years.
Do I have that right or wrong?
I know the 2011 AIMS Reading and Math scores have been released to the districts (the Writing scores have not been released yet), because I work in TUSD and I can look up scores online for my classes on the TUSD stats page. I cannot find any scores for Carpe Diem in Yuma, but people in that district know what they are.
It’s interesting that this new GoldWater propagandist released this short report (actually “report” is stretching it; “missive” is a more accurate word) without a reference to this year’s scores, or without a link to this year’s scores. I don’t believe in coincidences.
I read the story The Republic published last March, and the information is much more disturbing than you report, Mr. Safier. To get one group of students go from 58% to 100% the next year, then drop to 74% the year after is unexplainable in the normal course of affairs. The state expects student scores to go up or down around 2% a year, (Average Yearly Progress, “AYP”), not 42% or 26%. One class of kids does not go from 58% in 6th grade to 100% in 7th grade. Something hinky going on, and everybody knows it.
Also, the Republic reports there is only one teacher for 240 students, and students spend most of their time in front of a computer. You and I both know a student does not learn the subtle differences between 3rd person omniscient point of view and 3rd person limited point of view, or how to identify and then interpret figurative language in prose and poetry, or how to explain how an author’s use of rhyme or meter contributes to the author’s purpose (which must also be inferred — how does an online program even teach inferences, anyways?) — these are just a few of the very specific performance objectives found in the state English standards for 6th and 7th and 8th grade, and the AIMS tests has questions about these topics. Therefore it is absolutely PREPOSTEROUS to assert that students can learn this stuff and develop proficiency and fluency with these abstract concepts by using a computerized program.
So, if this was true, if a computerized program mixed with a couple hours with a live teacher (what was the euphemism? “blended learning” ) can produce students who start at the 58th percentile and in one year progress up to the 100th percentile, then these people could be selling this to every school in the world. You think Singapore and Finland and all the other countries who spend a lot of time and energy and money educating their kids to the point they score at the top in international science, reading and math tests would be knocking down doors and swimming across oceans to get their hands on this stuff. But they are not, because they know it’s hinky just like the rest of us do.
Given the propositions I assert above, that cheating is obvious, that the gains reported cannot be made any other way, and that the abstract concepts tested on the AIMS Reading test for 6th, 7th, and 8th grades cannot be effectively taught using an online program, (certainly not to the point where students go from 58th percentile to 100th percentile in one year) it feels like this guy from the GI is insulting our intelligence by making these assertions. You could not sit around the dinner table with educated adults and make such crazy assertions out loud. In person, nobody would stand for such outlandish claims being inserted into a real conversation. What’s a suitable analogy? Is this new guy like a schizophrenic at a bus stop talking to himself?